XP Home SP2 "forgets" 2nd HD and CD-ROM

[David]

Background: got a new Dell Dimension 4700 pre-loaded with XP Home SP2. It
came with an IDE CD-ROM and one SATA hard drive. I wanted to install the IDE
drive from my old (WinME/FAT32) system as a second hard drive.

The Dell CD-ROM was connected to the MB's single (only) IDE port with a
ribbon cable with only one device connector, so I replaced that
single-connector ribbon cable with one with two device connectors, and
connected my old hard drive and the Dell CD-ROM to it. I set the jumper on
the CD-ROM to slave and on my old hard drive to master.

Rebooted, did a scan for hardware changes, and it found both the old hard
drive (D:) and the CD-ROM (E:), and everything worked great.

===> But everytime I reboot, XP "forgets" the old hard drive and CD-ROM. If
I manually do a scan for hardware changes (under Computer Mgmt), it finds
them and everything then works fine (until I shutdown, that is, and I have to
repeat the process again).

I've trying removing both the old hard drive and CD-ROM (by unplugging the
IDE ribbon cable), starting XP and then shutting it down, in the hopes that
it would permanently forget about these devices, and then I repeated the
install/discovery process again. But it just refuses to permanently
"remember" these devices.

What's going on here? Is there some interaction between the automatic
discovery mechanism in the BIOS and in XP?

Thanks for any help (BTW: I've already contacted Dell "support". Their
solution was to reload from the recovery CD and forget about adding the 2nd
drive!)

David

[R. McCarty]

Enter BIOS setup and make sure that both Master/Slave settings for
the Secondary channel are set to Auto. Also, while in XP double-click
the Secondary IDE controller in Device Manager and make sure that
both taps (M/S) are not set to None.

"David" > wrote in message
...
> Background: got a new Dell Dimension 4700 pre-loaded with XP Home SP2. It
> came with an IDE CD-ROM and one SATA hard drive. I wanted to install the
> IDE
> drive from my old (WinME/FAT32) system as a second hard drive.
>
> The Dell CD-ROM was connected to the MB's single (only) IDE port with a
> ribbon cable with only one device connector, so I replaced that
> single-connector ribbon cable with one with two device connectors, and
> connected my old hard drive and the Dell CD-ROM to it. I set the jumper
> on
> the CD-ROM to slave and on my old hard drive to master.
>
> Rebooted, did a scan for hardware changes, and it found both the old hard
> drive (D:) and the CD-ROM (E:), and everything worked great.
>
> ===> But everytime I reboot, XP "forgets" the old hard drive and CD-ROM.
> If
> I manually do a scan for hardware changes (under Computer Mgmt), it finds
> them and everything then works fine (until I shutdown, that is, and I have
> to
> repeat the process again).
>
> I've trying removing both the old hard drive and CD-ROM (by unplugging the
> IDE ribbon cable), starting XP and then shutting it down, in the hopes
> that
> it would permanently forget about these devices, and then I repeated the
> install/discovery process again. But it just refuses to permanently
> "remember" these devices.
>
> What's going on here? Is there some interaction between the automatic
> discovery mechanism in the BIOS and in XP?
>
> Thanks for any help (BTW: I've already contacted Dell "support". Their
> solution was to reload from the recovery CD and forget about adding the
> 2nd
> drive!)
>
> David
>
>