A working Master Samsung 80GB Hard disk running WinXP was installed as a slave in another computer for data transfer. The HD was wrongly jumpered to limit to 32GB size. No data was written to it or was visible during this period. Active@ Partition Recovery software was used to successfully recover all files as no data was avaiable even after correcting the jumper setting. Now the original computer refuses to boot even with a Win98SE DOS floppy boot disk. If the hard disk is removed the system boots okay with the same floppy. The BIOS is able to detect it only as a SLAVE but not Master on either of the 2 IDE cables, even by itself. It works happily as a slave using WinXP on the second computer. But even the second computer will not boot with a WIN98SE boot floppy if this HD is in place. So unable to run Fdisk. Both computers use INTEL D865 PERL Motherboard Please help.

Try clearing your CMOS back to defaults in the original machine, and recheck those jumper settings are on master - try CS/cable select too. You could try starting a recovery console from your windows XP Cd (see here), if it will boot from CD. Then rebuild the MBR from there (fixboot or fixmbr i >think<). Good luck P4 LGA775 3.0GHz 2x256Mb DDR2 533MHz XFX 6800GT PCI-E

don't use cable select david

Jumer is in Master. Tried with Cable Select also...no luch.... thinking of low level format... look ing for a software to do that now.