Secondary Hard drive (Windows XP SP2) 99

[Guest]

nI have a secondary hard drive (120Mg western digital) that worked fine for
over a year. A couple of months ago my machine started booting to a black
screen. The windows screen appeared the the whole thing went black and
stopped booting and I had to shut down. I removed the secondary hard drive
and was only able to get the computer to work in VGA mode after several
tries. I Deleted the vid card drivers and re-installed vid card software and
all is fine. However if I attach the second hard drive the whole process
starts again?? Do these symptoms sound familiar to anyone?

 

[Guest]

PS I have A dell Dimension 4600. Just in case that helps. Additionally the
video card was installed long before the new hard drive and both co-existed
peacefully for abt a year?

 

[Rich Barry]

Ray, I would check your Power Supply. You could get Motherboard Monitor
which is a freebee and will give you a
idea of how your 3,5 and 12v rails are doing. They shouldnt drop more than
5% of their values.
http://www.pcworld.com/downloads/file_description/0,fid,7309,RSS,RSS,00.asp

 

[Guest]

Thanks! I am at work so don't know if it is the fix but I did find that my
cable was pinched and that probably falls in the realm of power supply
problems.

Impressive call..