XP & 2 Hard Drives Conflict? BootUp Loop

[CJ]

This past weekend my husband installed XP on my PC. He
placed a second hard Drive (D)into my system that contains
my precious system, WIN 98 and my saved files. Our plan
was/is to move many files, such as photos, etc. onto the
hard drive, Drive C, that is XP, and afterwards remove the
second hard drive (D) from my PC. But as of yet, I've not
moved any files from D to C as I'm having a BIG problem.
On booting up the PC gets caught in a boot/start up loop.
It gets so far into the boot up when it starts a disk
check. It always says "Checking file system on D: The
type of file system is FAT32". Once the disk check is
complete, the PC starts to load XP and then is starts to
reboot again. If I stop the disk check before it begins in
one of the repeat bootup loops, the PC 'sometimes' manages
to load XP and works for while. During the times XP is
working at some time it suddenly starts rebooting on it's
own. Other times when it's working and I go to shut it
down, half the time it shuts down, then immediately starts
to reboot, and there we go again...caught in that
rebooting/disk check loop. We don't know if the problem is
a startup/shut down issue, or a problem with the smaller
hard drive (D) that holds my precious operating system (WIN
98) since that disk check on boot up is always checking
Drive D. We'd apprecitate any help in what might be our
problem and how to fix it. Thank you so much.

 

[root]

This past weekend my husband installed XP on my PC. He
placed a second hard Drive (D)into my system that contains
my precious system, WIN 98 and my saved files. Our plan
was/is to move many files, such as photos, etc. onto the
hard drive, Drive C, that is XP, and afterwards remove the
second hard drive (D) from my PC. But as of yet, I've not
moved any files from D to C as I'm having a BIG problem.
On booting up the PC gets caught in a boot/start up loop.
It gets so far into the boot up when it starts a disk
check. It always says "Checking file system on D: The
type of file system is FAT32". Once the disk check is
complete, the PC starts to load XP and then is starts to
reboot again. If I stop the disk check before it begins in
one of the repeat bootup loops, the PC 'sometimes' manages
to load XP and works for while. During the times XP is
working at some time it suddenly starts rebooting on it's
own. Other times when it's working and I go to shut it
down, half the time it shuts down, then immediately starts
to reboot, and there we go again...caught in that
rebooting/disk check loop. We don't know if the problem is
a startup/shut down issue, or a problem with the smaller
hard drive (D) that holds my precious operating system (WIN
98) since that disk check on boot up is always checking
Drive D. We'd apprecitate any help in what might be our
problem and how to fix it. Thank you so much.

It's likely some kind of HW problem unrelated to XP or the D drive. But
what? What got moved, tweaked or bumped in the upgrade process? Is there a
heat problem; try it with the case off?

 

[Harry Ohrn]

This sounds hardware related. It may even be a problem with the new drive.
Somethings I'd check are:
1) Is everything firmly seated? Sometimes mucking around inside the case can
result in lose connections. Ensure that the IDE and power cables are firmly
connected. Also check that the RAM is securely seated and that your CPU fan
is turning when you power up.

2) Check to ensure that your drives are jumpered correctly. The new drive
should be jumpered as Master on the Primary Controller and the Win98
drive(your precious files) should be jumpered as Slave on the Primary
Controller

3) Unplug Win98 drive and try running the computer with just the XP drive.
Does it run stable?

 

[JCO]

When you put the second drive on, make sure it is set to slave. You must
set the jumpers on the HD so that the bios knows that one drive is "Master"
and the second drive is "Slave".

Then reboot

 

[root]

When you put the second drive on, make sure it is set to slave.

Or cable select.

You must
set the jumpers on the HD so that the bios knows that one drive is "Master"
and the second drive is "Slave".

These days usually the correct setting is 'cable select' and attach a 2nd
drive to the middle connector of the cable or better yet connect the 2nd HD
to a different ATA cable than the first HD.