The moving blue squares stop on startup - Please help..

[Royston Tin]

Hi,

I run WinXP Pro SP2.

All was well until I moved one of my hard drives from the SATA cable to
a PATA cable. (I had to do this because Norton Ghost did not recognise
the SATA drive).

Since then, after switching on, at the point where Windows is loading,
and the three little blue squares are moving form left to right:- at the
end of the second time moving, they stop for approximately 90 seconds.
After that delay, Windows loads as normal. While they are stopped I
cannot see or hear any activity in the computer.

Can you please tell me how I can restore the uninterrupted loading of
Windows. I have been thinking of re-installing Windows over the existing
installation, but that does seem a little drastic, because I do not know
what will really happen, when all I want to do is to make the OS
recognise and accept the change in configuration of the hard drives.

Many thanks

Royston.

 

[Miss Perspicacia Tick]

Hi,

I run WinXP Pro SP2.

All was well until I moved one of my hard drives from the SATA cable
to a PATA cable. (I had to do this because Norton Ghost did not
recognise the SATA drive).

You must be pretty talented to do that - you cannot attach a S-ATA drive to
a P-ATA cable, just as you cannot attach a P-ATA drive to a S-ATA cable.

A P-ATA cable is s a standard IDE 80-pin cable. A S-ATA cable is 7-pin.

See http://www.ixbt.com/storage/serial-ata/sata_pata_cable.jpg. The cable on
the left is P-ATA, the on on the right, S-ATA. I know of no dual-connection
drives (unless the really early drives were - I'm willing to be corrected if
I'm wrong).

 

[bud]

You must be pretty talented to do that - you cannot attach a S-ATA drive
to a P-ATA cable, just as you cannot attach a P-ATA drive to a S-ATA
cable.

A P-ATA cable is s a standard IDE 80-pin cable. A S-ATA cable is 7-pin.

See http://www.ixbt.com/storage/serial-ata/sata_pata_cable.jpg. The cable
on the left is P-ATA, the on on the right, S-ATA. I know of no
dual-connection drives (unless the really early drives were - I'm willing
to be corrected if I'm wrong).

Haven't used one myself but there are adapters that plug in the back of a
SATA drive so it can be used with a IDE cable.

 

[Royston Tin]

You must be pretty talented to do that - you cannot attach a S-ATA drive to
a P-ATA cable, just as you cannot attach a P-ATA drive to a S-ATA cable.

A P-ATA cable is s a standard IDE 80-pin cable. A S-ATA cable is 7-pin.

See http://www.ixbt.com/storage/serial-ata/sata_pata_cable.jpg. The cable on
the left is P-ATA, the on on the right, S-ATA. I know of no dual-connection
drives (unless the really early drives were - I'm willing to be corrected if
I'm wrong).

Hi,

Sorry if I did not give all the details.

My motherboard is an ABIT NF7S ver2, and has got connectors for SATA
built onto it. My first configuration was to connect two hard drives,
one each to the two SATA connectors, and one hard drive, carrying the
OS, to the normal IDE channel connector.

I loaded the image of the OS drive onto one of the SATA drives, but when
i tried to read from the image, the drive was not recognised.

I need to have a drive image handy at all times, and knew that the
imaging program could read from PATA drives, so I simply shut down,
removed the SATA adapter and connector, fitted the connector of the
second IDE channel onto that drive. On starting up, the image file was
recognised and all appeared well. Except for the delay in startup
concerning which I need advice.

So you see, I am not really so talented after all.

Royston.