When I boot up from a duel boot screen my second drive does not stay active for more than a few mins. Sometimes it does nor fire up at all. I have two drives: 1 master C with Windows 98 2 slave with 4 partitions one of which has XP Home With the second drive NOT connected I can run 98 fine With it connected it does not let me into to XP and only runs for a short time shutting down and making the computer hang. Can I perform ANY maintenance on it? Can I take it apart? What is causing this? I have only had the 100GB drive about 18 months and it has a lot of data on it as well that I don’t want to lose. I can’t even keep it running long enough to make a copy. HELPPPPPPPPPPPPP

A HDD MUST be open in a controlled "clean room" environment. If you open the HDD case otherwise, you'll destroy it completely & all data will be lost...unless you're willing to pay a ridiculous sum to a data recovery specialist ASUS A7N8X-X Athlon XP 1800+ 8.5 x 200MHz 1024MB PC3200 2.5-3-3-7 Asus A9550GE/TD 128MB WinME/WinXP Pro SP2

"With the second drive NOT connected I can run 98 fine With it connected it does not let me into to XP" Do you mean you cannot boot XP at all?? Double check all the cable connections, maybe try using a different power connector and/or data cable for the drive. you can always download a diagnostic program from the drive manufacturer's web site. 98% of the population is asleep. The other 2% are staring around in complete amazement, abject terror, or both.

he changed out the mainboard so of course XP won't load. Totally different Hal.dll and drivers. Your ONLY solution is put the old mainboard back in, boot your xp and backup your files. Then start from scratch with the new mainboard in the system. This means you wipe the drives and install fresh. Golly gee wilerkers everyone. Learn to Internet Search