Hard drive

You need to get yourself a good boot manager, I'd recommended System Commander7, there's nothing it can't do.

http://www.v-com.com/index.html

1. Does XP shutdown correctly when the Me drive is not present?
If so, when you boot without the Me drive, have you reset the Master drive jumpers for w/o slave?

One possability is that the Master drive is not jumpered for use with a slave drive.

2. Are the drives different brands, or different ATA speeds?
While it doesn't happen as often as it used to, some combinations of differnt make and model drives may not co-exist well.

If possible, place the Me drive on the secondary IDE channel as a test.

3. How did you install and setup for dual-booting the operating systems?
If you are using the built-in XP boot manager, you are suppossed to install Me, and then XP.

You may need to closely inspect the commands in the boot.ini file to verify that everything is setup properly.

You can find details on the boot.ini commnads at either www.systeminternals.com
or search Microsoft's site on the terms boot,ini and bootcfg

4. Your IDE controller or cable may be going bad.Try a new cable, and if possible, a PCI IDE controller card.
The controller card would give you 2 more IDE channels, and make it easier to segregate drives.

5. I have seen a couple of motherboards that have problems with a "warm" boot recognizing the IDE devices.
Along the same lines, I have seen some very strange symtoms with SDRAM socket A motherboards if you let the BIOS automatically set the CPU buss and multiplier.

Chas

It’s useless to talk about harddrive master/slave configuration problem or master/slave jumper settings without knowing the brands and makes of your harddrives, and also your motherboard model.
Yes, as it’s already mentioned, there are some compatibility issues with and between some HDDs (for example, a single Maxtor on some Abit motherboards). Also some HDD makes and models don’t have at all that “master-with-slave-present” vs. “master-withoit-slave” jumper setting, they might have just “master” or “slave” (and also “cable-select”).
Also the WinXP is well known for sometimes gets crazy by itself on a single HDD with single boot depending on APM or ACPI settings ON or OFF in BIOS, also with fast shutdown, HDD caching enabled, also when set other than Standard Computer configuration, etc...

Don’t hesitate to provide more info on you hardware/software, related to HDDs and WinXP, first starting from a simple configuration, a single HDD on either channel with no other IDE devices connected, (the Answer2 is an excellent guide on how to do it).

Hi
As I understand your question.
1- Two drives first XP OS jumped as master.
2- second ME OS jumped as slave.
3- present both work fine.
4- XP freezes during shutdown saving settings I power off reboot no drives.
5- power off unplug second drive reboot fine shutdown normal.
6- plug up drive reboot both work fine.
7- other times same results until last.
8- now when I plug in second drive I get no drives or second drive only.

Answer:
Could you plz supply these information to getyou the right answer.
1- Did I anlyze your question right?
2- model no. size. and manufacturer of both hard drive.
3- which operating system you installed first.
4-Are you using any third party load manager.
5-Is your IDE controller supporting large drives. more than 32GB. check with motherboard manufacturer or supply name of motherboard name and manufacturer.
6- What type of partion you have in both drive.

If you supply information for these i may help and the others too.

It could be Jumber setting. For some drive it need 2 jumbers to be set if one only set it works but not Stable.Other thing IDE controller is having compatability problem or it is not stable.It could be hard disk or BIOS or OS limations.It could be load mnagerproblem ?
It could be some drives do not like to be salve sepicilly if it is not the same type. or have a salve not the same type
so on ...

Good luck

Mohamed

I have a CELRON 700 With 393MB sdram 100.My mother board is GA-6WMMC7.The ME was the original drive(FUJITSU LIMITED) MODEL MPG3204AT
yeah it crashed but after removing it and letting it lay flat a few day's it started working again.I installed a new drive MAXTOR 541DX MODEL 2B020HI Style B.I tried to install photoshop 6.0 and it recomended installing it on a seperate physical drive since this was a program I wasn't going to use much I decided to put my old drive back in.XP would freeze occasionally even before I tried to put my old drive back in.I used both drives for a couple of weeks and my computer would shut down and reboot with no problem except for the occasional freeze which wasn't unusal.