I know, I know, I should have a whole tech forum for myself. I can't help it, I'm a tech-disaster waiting to happen.
My latest problem is one of the strangest I've ever experienced. I installed a brand new Western Digital hard drive with a brand new Windows XP Home edition and have been having all sorts of problems with it. My system crashes unexpectedly and sometimes reboots continuously after getting to the desktop.
But when I connect my second drive (Hitachi) as a slave and change the jumpers around (cable select on the primary), everything works... for a time. Then the system crashes and reboots. Playing around with the Hitachi jumper (specifically, trying different cable select options on the Hitachi) allows me about 20 minutes of access time to transfer data off the Hitachi to the Western Digital drive. Then the system crashes, reboots, and tells me "Reboot and Select Proper Boot Device", which I can't get around. I play around with the jumpers and, voila, I can get into Windows again. Then after a bit, it crashes. I'd desperately trying to get all my data off the Hitachi in case that drive is the problem. If it's the WD drive that is the problem, at least I'll have the same data on two different drives.
Anyone have any idea what the fuck is going on? I've run a diagnostic on the WD drive and so has a techy at the computer shop and it comes back as fine. Maybe there's a compatibility problem with the WD or the Hitachi or both, but the Hitachi always worked with my old system (same motherboard). Windows is fully installed with all updates.
My workaround detects the full drive sizes, if that matters.
My latest problem is one of the strangest I've ever experienced. I installed a brand new Western Digital hard drive with a brand new Windows XP Home edition and have been having all sorts of problems with it. My system crashes unexpectedly and sometimes reboots continuously after getting to the desktop.
But when I connect my second drive (Hitachi) as a slave and change the jumpers around (cable select on the primary), everything works... for a time. Then the system crashes and reboots. Playing around with the Hitachi jumper (specifically, trying different cable select options on the Hitachi) allows me about 20 minutes of access time to transfer data off the Hitachi to the Western Digital drive. Then the system crashes, reboots, and tells me "Reboot and Select Proper Boot Device", which I can't get around. I play around with the jumpers and, voila, I can get into Windows again. Then after a bit, it crashes. I'd desperately trying to get all my data off the Hitachi in case that drive is the problem. If it's the WD drive that is the problem, at least I'll have the same data on two different drives.
Anyone have any idea what the fuck is going on? I've run a diagnostic on the WD drive and so has a techy at the computer shop and it comes back as fine. Maybe there's a compatibility problem with the WD or the Hitachi or both, but the Hitachi always worked with my old system (same motherboard). Windows is fully installed with all updates.
My workaround detects the full drive sizes, if that matters.