From: "Glenn Meadows" 

I'm not 100% sure of the sequence of events Rich on this one, only got
called because things were/are screwed up.

When I got there, and how things are now, there are 2 drives, and 80 gig
and a 40 gig.  The 80 gig is set as MASTER, and the 40 gig as Slave on the
primary controller.  They are properly recognized as such in the Bios.  The
80 gig WAS the original ONLY disk in the system, it has ONLY one partition
(that I'm aware of, it's an eMachine and I don't believe that they use a
hidden recovery partition), and it would logically be the Primary
partition. The 40 Gig was an older drive that was in their prior eMachine
that the MB got whacked (I'm not so sure the HD is good, but that's another
speculation at this point).

Daniel (teen ager who got into this mess) had just successfully finished
installing a second Optical drive, a DVDR drive, as the Secondary Slave,
and that works OK, shows up as drive E.  Then he figured it would be cool
to have the other 40 gig as a second drive in the system.  What is unclear
here, is how he might have configured the jumpers on the drives (if he had
them in CS position, or not, he doesn't remember).  But, when he got the
drive installed, and the system booted, he then had a C, D, E, and F.  He
also started getting startup errors about programs not being able to be
found on C, that normally started when he logged on (Anti-Virus, and
programs that were installed didn't run (Icons were back to generic, and of
course were looking to C to run).  What triggered his brain to STOP and ask
questions, is that when he looked at the sizes of the drives, the 40 gig
drive was showing up as C, and the 80 gig was now F.  If he then
disconnected the second drive (40 gig), and only had the original drive
powered and connected, Windows would go to where the normal login
"Welcome" screen would be, but just a small Windows Logo would be
there, and the logon screen would never come up.  So, right now, to get the
system to boot, you need BOTH drives connected, BUT the two drives are
reversed in how the OS is treating them. (I looked long and hard at the
bios, and the drives are showing up there in their proper order as Master
and Slave).



--

Glenn M.
"Rich"  wrote in message news:42366d6b$1{at}w3.nls.net...
   The BIOS is responsible for the identity of the drives.  What is unclear
is the order of events here.

   Did the second drive get added them removed from a Windows installation
that occured when there was only one drive?

   Was the configuration of the one drive identical before the second drive
was added and after the second drive was removed?

Rich

  "Glenn Meadows"  wrote in message
news:42364da5{at}w3.nls.net...
  OK, WHY does this happen, I've seen it before, don't understand what
  actually causes this to happen.

  A friends child (14) decided to add a second HD to his XPPro install, from
  an old computer that they had.

  Somehow, he got the jumpers/connectors bolloxed up, and when the system
came
  up and booted, but the drive letters were now swapped.  Even though the
  original disk was still Primary master, and the second drive was Primary
  Slave, the C drive, was actually the slave drive, and the original drive
was
  now listed as drive F. (D and E are CD and DVD-R drive).

  If you remove the second HD, and try to boot the system, it starts to
boot,
  then ends up at a Blue Screen (not the BSOD, but a graphical screen with
the
  Windows Logo) and never boots.  Both drives have to be connected for the
  system to boot, but of course, anything that is in the registry as needing
  to start from C, won't start, since it's really on F.

  And, of course, the eMachine ONLY provides a Restore/Nuke CD
  (format/re-install is the only option).

  I believe that the solution is to remove the second HD, boot from a real
  WindowsXP CD, go to the Recovery Console, and do a FIXMBR command, in that
  the MBR on the primary HD is now farkled.

  But WHY does this happen?  Boot.ini looks correct (there's a boot.ini on
  both HD's, btw, from the old computer, which was an XPHome install).

  --

  Glenn M.

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