I just installed a new WD 160 GB harddrive on my friends computer. However, after installing the hard drive, it would not boot up anymore. In Bios, both primary master and slave are recognized as harddrives. The original one was a Maxtor 40gb harddrive. For some reason, it can be detected in Bios, but the computer cannot access it or find a boot record on it. When i tried to reinstall Windows, it would only allow me to install it on the second hard drive, and said "setup could not access this disk." What is wrong? Is it maybe the hard drive itself is broken?

For one thing, the 2nd HDD should be on the 2ndary channel. See response # 3: http://www.computing.net/hardware/wwwboard/forum/37210.html ASUS A7N8X-X Athlon XP 1800+ 8.5 x 200MHz 1024MB PC3200 2.5-3-3-7 Asus A9550GE/TD 128MB WinME/WinXP Pro SP1

Jam, I have seen you giving out this advice before, it is simply not correct. You can quite easily have two HDD's on the Primary IDE & two more on the secondary if you wished you just have to set the jumpers correctly, yes there are some benefits but they are wants, not needs. I have run my machine with one HDD on Primary and two CDROMS on secondary, one slave and one master, it worked OK although spreading the HDD's and CDRoms across both is preferable, it is simply not essential. Bob Mitchell. "There is no reason for any individual to have a computer in their home." - Kenneth Olsen, president and founder of Digital Equipment Corp., 1977.