Question...USB peripherals and no boot

[MAP]

This is just a question out of curiosity, my system is working fine...now.
I just replaced an internal DVD burner, and I know better than to do this
but I did not unplug my USB devices when I unplugged the power cord from the
computer when I swapped the drive out,needless to say my computer would not
bootup, error message was
"Secondary drive 1 not found".(I assume this is my hard drive,it is set to
the second boot drive in the BIOS).
Problem was fixed by unplugging the USB devices and another attempt at boot.
The question I have is why would my system not boot when this was happening
by the XP disc or by the boot disc I made with true image software.My
optical drive is set in the BIOS as the first drive to boot from (not the
drive that I replaced) also I could not enter the BIOS as well (the bios
version was displayed)
Thanks for your time.
Let the razzing begin!

 

[Richard Urban [MVP]]

Secondary drive 1 is likely the second drive (drive 0 - drive 1) on you
secondary IDE controller. Is that where you connected the DVD drive? Or it
could be the first drive on the secondary controller. It is all confusing
due to a lack of a standard.

Of course it all depends upon what is generating the message. Some refer to
drive 1 and drive 2 on an IDE controller also.

Then there is Belarc Advisor who refers to drives 0,1,2,3 across the IDE
controllers and Everest Home that refers to drives 1,2,3,4 across the IDE
controllers. (-:

Go figure!

--
Regards,

Richard Urban
Microsoft MVP Windows Shell/User

Quote from: George Ankner
"If you knew as much as you thought you know,
You would realize that you don't know what you thought you knew!"

 

[MAP]

Thanks for the responce Richard!

Secondary drive 1 is likely the second drive (drive 0 - drive 1) on you
secondary IDE controller. Is that where you connected the DVD drive?

After looking in device mgr. it looks like the secondary drive 1 is the one
that I changed out,but I still don't understand why my system did not boot
even if it couldn't find an optical drive,or why I could not even enter the
BIOS,all I had on my monitor was a black screen with a flashing cursor.
This seems like all smoke and mirrors right now.

Since all is working right now I'll geuss I shouldn't worry too much about
it,I just hate mysteries

 

[Richard Urban [MVP]]

I have run across thing that I could not get a handle on over the years. You
would be surprised how many time the process of turning off the computer for
about 1 minute and then starting it again has cleared up problems. I believe
that sometimes things get locked in RAM and a normal reboot doesn't give the
RAM enough time to flush.

--
Regards,

Richard Urban
Microsoft MVP Windows Shell/User

Quote from: George Ankner
"If you knew as much as you thought you know,
You would realize that you don't know what you thought you knew!"