XP won't start with second hard drive

[Jeff Spatz]

Windows XP Home Edition
eMachines 1.0G Celeron
30Gb original boot drive

Have just installed a second (additional storage) hard
drive (Maxtor 120GB). Jumpers are properly set for
master/slave. The auto-detect BIOS seems to work fine and
properly identifies the new drive in BIOS setup. The
format/partitioning utilities that came with the drive
(boot-up from the CD)work just fine and report that the
drive is working fine. Testing, format, partitioning all
complete fine.

But XP will not start with the new drive connected. After
BIOS I get a quick logo screen then blanks out and then a
full page text message including the following:
"Were sorry....., Windows XP did not start successfully. A
recent hardware change might have caused this." THen
gives the following restart options (none of which work):

Start in Safe Mode
Start in Safe MOde with Networking
Start in Safe Mode with Command Prompt
Last Know Good Configuration
Start Windows normally

None of these options will work, and it repeats the boot
and returns to this message screen over and over. I have
never had a situation where Windows would not even start
in Safe mode. If I disconnect the new drive, I get this
message screen once more, but then XP will start normally.

If the BIOS is satisfied with the new drive why will XP
not start? If the disk utilities test and format it OK,
why won't XP go along? How can I help XP accept the new
drive if I cannot even start-up to work with it?

Thanks for any help.

 

[Jerry]

COULD Be the Maxtor utilites you said were on the CD you got are not
compatible with XP so it can't see the drive.

If you have a DOS boot disk from an earlier version of Windows use it to
boot your computer and run FDISK to see if the new drive is recognized. You
might have to use FDISK to remove the partitons setup by the Maxtor CD and
then use FDISK to re-partiton the drive.

 

[D.Currie]

Better yet, leave it without partitions and let Windows create the
partitions and do the formatting.