Stephen,

IMHO it sounds like the IDE cables are reversed.  Try reversing them and see
what happens
in BIOS and on bootup.  I'd be very interested to see if that works.

Frank :<)

"Stephen SL. Lo" wrote:

> My PC (PII 266 with Win 98) originally has a HD (name it as "1st") and
> a CD-Rom connected to the primary IDE controller as master and slave
> respectively. I added a 2nd HD (nname it as "2nd"), connected to the
> seconard IDE controller as master. The 1st HD has only a single primary
> partition, (C:) Dos FAT32, active with Win98 as the OS. After physical
> connection of the 2nd HD I fdisk-ed it into a single extended partition
> with 2 logical drives (D:, E:; my cd-rom is Z:). Everything gose perfect
> in the BIO detecting stage, It shows Disk 0 (primary master) for the 1st,
> disk 2 (secondary master) 2nd. But my pc fails to boot I only get a black
> screen and a blinking curser, no warning message as invalid OS disk. I
> started it up with a startup disk and  checked with fdisk. I strangely
> found that the disk order is reversed. Disk 1 is 2nd (secondary
> master)with
> an ext partition (D:& E:) Disk 2 is 1st (Primary master) with primary
> partition (C:). This order is contradic to the phisical connection in the
> MB and the BIO. and I think that is why the booting fails.
>
> I need help to rectify this problem. Is the problem raised form the MB,
> the HD's
> or the IDE cables? Since i have no spare parts for troubleshooting please
> help me
> by giving your opions and suggections.
>
> Thank you very much for your response.
>
> Stephen Lo
>
> --
>
>         Stephen Lo ([log in to unmask])
>         Vancouver CommunityNet
>         Vancouver BC Canada
>

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