Windows ME boot problems

[StevenWKU]

I recently acquired a new (to me) computer that came installed with a Maxtor hard drive in the master position on the cable with the jumpers set accordingly and have tried to add another Maxtor hard drive from another computer to this computer as the slave with the jumper set accordingly, but have come across hurdles or problems. After first installing, the bios startup screen recognized two HDDs. But, when I went to My Computer, no D drive was present... tried going to fdisk and erasing the partitions that existed on the hard drive, then recreating a new partition, which seemed to work, bcuz fdisk showed the disk to have a drive letter assigned as D. After exiting fdisk and going to boot, I went into setup and made sure the boot order was for the Master then the Slave, which it was.... however, after exiting and attempting to boot up, the computer would seeminly lock up or just come to a stand still at the Windows ME logo screen.... never advancing further... I was able to then boot back up into safe mode and remove the partition I had created, then rebooted and the computer booted just fine. So I recreated the partition again, booted, froze at the logo... So then I restarted, went into setup, and disabled the slave on the boot priority list... and the computer booted just fine..... now with the computer running with the slave disabled, I get a couple weird occurances in device manager... they are:
Disk Drives: Generic IDE DiskType01 with a red X
&
Hard Disk Controllers: Primary IDE controller (dual fifo) with a red x

Now previously when the slave was first put on the cable and I went to device manager, it would show up as Generic IDE DiskType02 and appeared to have no problem, yet it had no drive letter, and after trying to resolve that, I am now to this point..... any advice... much appreciated in advance!

[glc]

You say that the jumpers are "set accordingly" - exactly how are they set and what type of IDE cable do you have? 80 wire color coded Ultra ATA cables should be used with Cable Select jumpering, and the connector positioning is critical.

[StevenWKU]

Master drive jumpers set to master, slave drive jumper set to slave... neither on cable select... and I am not sure what type of IDE cable I have....

Originally Posted by glc You say that the jumpers are "set accordingly" - exactly how are they set and what type of IDE cable do you have? 80 wire color coded Ultra ATA cables should be used with Cable Select jumpering, and the connector positioning is critical.

[Cricket]

Does the IDE cable have 3 different colored connectors or are they all black or dark brown? 3 separate connector colors are used for 80 wire IDE cables and single color connectors are used for 40 wire IDE cables.

The 40 wire IDE cable has a very coarse surface texture...you can see the individual wires. The 80 wire IDE cable has a much finer surface texture and there are obviously more than 40 wires.

Cricket

[GaryRouth]

StevenWKU - is all OK now, with the cables & jumpers sorted?

If not, might check in the Bios that the IDE drives are set to "AUTO" for auto-detection of their types. Also, when you used fdisk to create a DOS partition on the slave drive, did you remember to not mark it active? (You'd only want your older drive's partition marked active, so that it's the bootable partition).

Just a thought.
. . . Gary

[StevenWKU]

I think I actually may have marked the partition as active... I should be able to delete it and recreate a partition without making it active... Or is there any way to make it unactive without deleting the partition.... I'll update the situation tonight... thanks

Originally Posted by GaryRouth StevenWKU - is all OK now, with the cables & jumpers sorted? If not, might check in the Bios that the IDE drives are set to "AUTO" for auto-detection of their types. Also, when you used fdisk to create a DOS partition on the slave drive, did you remember to not mark it active? (You'd only want your older drive's partition marked active, so that it's the bootable partition). Just a thought. . . . Gary