2 hard drive trouble

[Elmira]

I bought a 2nd hard drive for storage (maxtor 60gb 133 ATA) for my Dell
4550, p4, winxp sp2. The hard drive is installed and recognized. Now
here's the problem.... everything seems to be fine til I try to delete any
file or folder. The dialog box for Win explorer encountered a problem comes
up and references shlwapi.dll as the problem. So I close the box and up
pops " Dr. Watson postmortem debugger encountered a problem. Event type:
BEX". Then it totally hangs till I give it the 3 fingered salute. I see 2
Dr.Watsons listed in the task manager where normally there are none. Once I
close them I can use my computer again. But the file that started it still
isnt deleted. I can drag it to recycle with no problem, however.

I ran the Maxtor diagnostic and the new drive passed. Both show as
''healthy'' in disk management.

Next I unplugged the 2nd drive and everything worked fine as usual.

So I called Dell and after a run-around was told that my operating system
seems like it isnt supporting 2 drives. Has anyone ever encountered this?
I tried getting to a senior tech but kept getting looped back to the
incompetent level techs.

The drive was on sale and has to be returned by Tues if I cant get it to
work.

Being a Dell you know I only have a restore disk, not a full copy of XP.

 

[Guest]

Try installing on the other IDE chain,then on desktop,go to run,type:
Diskmgmt.msc In msc,L.click on the drive,actions,all,set as active,close
out msc.Open system properties,advanced,advanced,virtual-memory,change
button,L.click on the drive,select,"let windows manage",click set 2X,then
close-out,a restart should be prompted.

 

[Sunny]

I would put both hard drives on the same IDE controller. The original drive
should be designated as master and the added drive should be designated as
slave. Check your owner's manual to determine how to do this. If your Dell
is like mine, it uses cable select. The master goes on the end connector and
the slave goes on the middle connector of the data ribbon.. Both drives must
be jumpered for cable select. Go to Dell's support site to see if they have
a BIOS update for your computer. Unless you have a hardware problem, the
drive should work if you get the foregoing right.

 

[Elmira]

I know someone else who had this problem and said it is caused by SP2. He
uninstalled SP2 and was fine with 2 drives. I'm not sure I want to
uninstall SP2 ...... I'm afraid that will cause more problems than it's
worth.

 

[Sunny]

Did you do what I suggested, or just wonder if it is SP2?

 

[Elmira]

Hi Sunny,
I actually did try what you told me. It helped me to know I had things
correct after I read what you said about drive placement on the ribbon cable
as well as the jumpers. Unfortunately, that wasnt the solution.

Then I remembered I had an email "tip of the day" with a toll-free microsoft
sp2 help number... 866-787-2338. I called there and they helped me
uninstall sp2, download a fresh copy of sp2, waited while I put the hd back
in the tower and reinstalled sp2. Now it seems to be working fine!
El