[xyberian]

Hi, if anyone can help me I would be so very thankful. Here is my scenario: I have two pc's. I have recently upgraded one pc with a new motherboard, ram, and graphics card. My intention was to then combine the hard drive of both pc's as a master drive and slave drive in the upgraded pc. I have tried all combinations of the drives but, neither will take control as the master and therefore they both fail to boot alone or coupled. I then took a third drive I had stored away, loaded XP onto it, and then inserted it into the upgraded pc as the master drive with no problems. (except that I could not activate and register the XP copy that I had already installed previously…so after thirty days this drive does me no good) With the third drive in place I inserted one at a time the initial two hard drives with complete success in slave drive roles. My question is what can I do to get the two original drives or even just one to takeover the role of master? If they both work fine as slaves what is preventing them from being master drives? I am about to succumb to purchasing a third XP copy and reinstalling the OS on my third drive and giving up. PLEASE HELP!

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im sure the other guys will give a more detailed description. any how.. is the jumpers set right?.. on the back of the hard drive that you want as master. do you have the jumpers in the right order?
this image is just for reference to to show you what i mean by the jumpers in case you don't know what i mean. the master settings vary so you will need to look at the image on your hard drive


there should be a small pic on the hard drive showing you were to put the jumper for master and slave and so on..

Edited by StaticRed, 25 November 2006 - 08:39 PM.

[StaticRed]

im sure the other guys will give a more detailed description. any how.. is the jumpers set right?.. on the back of the hard drive that you want as master. do you have the jumpers in the right order?
this image is just for reference to to show you what i mean by the jumpers in case you don't know what i mean. the master settings vary so you will need to look at the image on your hard drive


there should be a small pic on the hard drive showing you were to put the jumper for master and slave and so on..

Edited by StaticRed, 25 November 2006 - 08:39 PM.

[xyberian]

yep tried every jumper configuration thx though

[austin_o]

You need to use the jumper setting specified by your hard drive manufacturer. These are usually displayed on the hard drive itself. If it is not, go the the manufacturer's web page and look for the information there.

[Darlena]

Did your old hard drives show up in your bios setting? Try setting them up as master and slave again, then clear your bios settings. reboot and see if they show up in bios as master and slave. if they do you can change your boot up order to cd-rom first, then reinstall windows, follow the instruction carefully.

www.geekstogo.com/forum/How_to_repair_Windows_XP-t138.html

You will have to reinstall all windows updates which can take awhile, but you won't lose any of the data on your hard drive. You will also have to call in to get a new product key because your old one won't work, even though it is a legit product key(microsoft will give you a new product key)