Hard drive problem

[fogstratus]

I am having a problem attempting to install a second hard drive in my Wife’s computer (Just for information: I have worked with computers for 20+ years, and PCs for ten years. All the PCs I have had have been built by me or put together by someone else. I have changed motherboards, hard drives, and everything else that goes into a computer. I am self-taught, but note an expert, and, obviously, not afraid {although often nervous!} to tear into a computer.). This is the second hard drive I have tried to install, with no success. The first drive was a 7200 rpm, 40 GB, Maxtor, which I eventually installed in my computer, and it works. The hard drive I am now trying to install is a Seagate Barracuda 80 GB drive. I am encountering essentially the same problem, which leads me to believe the difficulty is in the motherboard, BIOS or ???????. After spending two months going back-and-forth with Maxtor (even getting a replacement hard drive), at their suggestion, I obtained a new BIOS (actually replaced the chip), but that did not help. One difference with the Seagate from the Maxtor, I have been able to fdisk, format, load the W2K OS on it, and have it function, BUT only by itself! If I install it as the Primary Master, Primary Slave or Secondary Master I get the following message:

*** STOP: 0x0000007B (0xEB81F848,0xC0000034,0x00000000,0x00000000)
INACCESSIBLE_BOOT_DEVICE

If this is the first time you’ve seen this STOP error screen,
restart your computer. If this screen appears again, follow
these steps:

Check for viruses on your computer. Remove any newly installed
hard drives or hard drive controllers. Check your hard drive
to make sure it is properly configured and terminated.
Run CHKDSK /F to check for hard drive corruption, and then
restart your computer.

Refer to your Getting Started manual for more information on
troubleshooting Stop errors.

Other information: the motherboard is an ABIT BP6, with two 400 MHz Intel processors, 786,432 K memory, and the Western Digital is a 30 GB drive.

When I start the computer it will go through the BIOS portion (I change it every time I re-configure the hard drives) without any difficulty, recognizing each of the hard drives. Windows begins to load, with the opening screen, and the scroll gets a little more than half-way across, the screen goes to black, and then, instead of the Windows screen returning, the above Blue Screen of Death with the message comes up on the screen, and that ends it.

Does anyone have any idea why, what, how or ??????????????????

Thanks,

Steve

[wedor]

So, let me understand this, have you tried the drive by itself in this machine?

[fogstratus]

Sorry, I should have mentioned this.

When I tried the Maxtor, I could not get it to install by itself. However, I was able to fdisk, format, and load W2K on the Seagate drive when it was installed alone. So, I now have W2K on both hard drives. Putting the Western digital with it as the Primary Master, Primary Slave or Secodary Master results in the situation described in my Post.

Yes, I have considered that the Western Digital or some wierd W2K "something" related to it is the crux of the problem, but I can't figure out what, why, how or ?????. My wife has a ton of stuff on the WD, which I would like to copy onto the Seagate or even leave on the WD, if I could get them both running at the same time.

I probably think I know more than I do, and just enough to make me dangerous!

Thanks,

Steve

[Iman74]

For whatever reason there are 2 or more brands that don't work together in a PC but seperatley they do. I came across this same problems 7years ago and haven't seen it since and I think but not sure it was a Maxtor and a Seagate; together they wouldn't work/recognize but seperately they worked just fine.

A little history might help or not. Just my 2 cents.

[Iman74]

If SCSI you are terminating?

If EIDE are you triple checking the jumpers?

[fogstratus]

Thanks, Iman74. The "history" is interesting. I'll see if I can find more on that idea.

Yes, I have checked, and re-checked the EIDE jumpers.