It is a long story. A professor had a new Gateway 2000 coming in. He asked me to setup for him and he would like to keep all the applications and files on the old computer. I took the new hard disk out and put the old two hard disks on the new computer. Later the professor wanted to get rid of one of the old hard drives and put the 20GB new one on. There is Windows98 second edition installed on the new hard drive already. After I put the new one on, neither of the hard disks, the new one,and old one with Windows98 on it, was able to be recognized. But when I used only either one of them, the computer was able to boot up and run. I thought it is some compatibility problem and formated the new one. It did not work. What should I do. The professor is a impatient guy! Help!

Check your jumpers for master/slave if you put them on the same ide channel one will have to set to master and other to slave. Make sure the cable is connected correctly in relation to pin one (usually a red or black stripe). After installing the drives and checking the physical connections re-boot and enter setup and have the hard drives auto-detected. Also check to make sure you boot up configuration is set to a: then c: (or c: then a: if you plan to do a lot of work with a startup disk stick with a: then c http://www.PCGuide.com/ubb/smile.gif
Was all data on FAT32 partitions?
Get back with us if this does/doesn't help.

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Jerry

I do not have the plug to work with the jumper outlet. I was told that I can use the IDE1 and IDE2 to connect to the two hard disks separately and let the BOIS recognize them automatically as primary or slavery. This worked fine on my other computer. Whether it is going to work on the one in question, I have to check out tomorrow.
By the way, I formatted the new hard disk. What should I do if I want to setup multi-boot with the two disks?
Thanks a lot. http://www.PCGuide.com/ubb/rolleyes.gif

How many IDE channels do you have on that puppy? I'd say if you only have 2 and no CD ROM drives then using both channels with each drive being a master would solve your probs...BUT if you're gonna stack a CD-ROM drive in there (with only 2 IDE channels) I would keep the hard drives on the primary IDE (1 master and 1 slave...set the jumpers accordingly on the back of the drives...you can get extra jumpers from any pc repair shop at minimal cost or free). Usually putting a HD on the same channel as a CD drive substantially slows down the HD.
As for a dual-boot system...depending on the two operating systems you're referring to you will need some type of boot manager...check out one called Boot Commander and I think www.powerquest.com (http://www.powerquest.com) has one (if not the same). If you are talking about Linux do some research on LILO (Linux Loader). I'm sure a quick search on Google will come up with an overwhelming number of hits to wade through. Also on this topic probably best to put the diff OS's on diff HD's http://www.PCGuide.com/ubb/smile.gif

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Jerry

Well bassvax answered it all in a gr8 way. U have to look for the jumpers on the hard drives u're installing.
one must be set to master (if it has both master and master standalone, make sure u select master; the chart for the jumper settings must be available either on the upper face of the hard drive or near the jumper), and the other to slave.
If u don't use a cdrom, putting both drives on seperate IDE cables will surely solve ur problem without having to do any jumper change.

Could not do it without you guys. Thanks a bunch. Have a nice weekend.
Yong