Thank you for your help. I don't have a Win 98 boot disk but did verify that
the OS is on the c: drive and not the one I am trying to remove. I
discovered that I am able to boot to Win XP in safe mode even with the extra
drive disconnected. I used msconfig to experiment with turning off various
processes and applications but haven't yet found the one that is causing the
problem. I guess I may just live with it for now and eventually reinstall
windows.
John Vercelli

-----Original Message-----
From: PCBUILD - Personal Computer Hardware discussion List
[mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of John Dinges
Sent: Friday, October 31, 2003 12:09 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: [PCBUILD] Removing hard Drive


On Tue, 28 Oct 2003 14:55:18 -0800, John Vercelli
<[log in to unmask]> wrote:

>I am trying to remove an extra hard drive. The computer will not reboot
>when I disconnect that drive. Am using Windows XP Pro. The drive in
>questions is connected to a PCI slot SIIG ide card. Virtual memory is
>on the C: drive. Tried disabling both the drive and the ide card in
>hardware manager then rebooting but same problem. The drive was used to
>store data only, no programs. Before disconnecting, I copied the data
>to another drive and wiped the drive with Norton Utilities.
>
>
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Does the computer complete POST?  If so, when you get to the initialization
screen, hit pause/break and see what bios is recognizing. It's possible the
O/S is on the drive you are trying to remove. Boot with a Win 98 boot disk,
at the A prompt type C: then at the C: prompt TypeDIR/P and see what comes
up. Look and see if it shows a Windows Directory, if it doesn't, the O/S is
not on C: which is where Bios looks for the O/S. Type D: Then DIR/P and see
if there is an O/S here. If so, the letters assigned to the drives got
screwed up along the way some how. You might try plugging that drive into
the MOBO and unplugging the other drive and try rebooting. If it comes up,
you've found the problem.

Let us now what happens.

Good Luck
John

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