My computer has two 120 GB hard drives of different make. Today, I had to remove the master drive and replaced it with another in order to fix a second computer (which is completely unrelated). After I replaced the original master drive, I noticed that my computer had become a bit sluggish. I mean, it's manageable, but it's slower than it was before, and in strange ways. The symptoms are that programs take a little bit longer to load, things that are animated are a little choppy when starting, sound stutters when things are loading, and the overall system feels slower. Now, remember, all I did was remove the master drive and put it back in (basically). I had this *exact* same problem before when I removed and put back the hard drive (no slave drive at this point) to do a demonstration. I don't remember how it was solved, but I remember it being something really strange and not-at-all related to the hard drives. I think I reordered the cards, but I've tried that for this new problem, and that didn't fix it. So far, I have narrowed down the problem somewhat. It is NOT: RAM Motherboard CPU Heating Any BIOS settings Drivers Hardware connections Now, it could be anything else, no matter how mundane. I'm open to anything-- there was a computer I had that could only run if the tower was laid on its side. So, uh, help. Please.

Well, you left one very important point out of this: THE REGISTRY... When you pulled the hard disk, and put it in another computer, it reset the system configuration in the registry. Then, you put it back into the same computer, but now the registry and the system configuration have different pointers. Did you take the time to do a system restore that you can restore to? You might also try purchasing Registry Mechanic for $29.95 on the internet and running a registry scan and fix.

Maybe it's the cable? Did you put another Master drive in your system? Unless the other drive was using default microsoft drivers or was out of an identical system,or had win98 as it's OS that is not a good thing to do. Your absolutely sure nothing has changed in the bios? Tt Lanfire nf7-s v2.0 XP-m 2500@210x11 SP 97 512mb pc3200 Jou Jye 550w psu FX5600 WDCaviar 160gb sata WDCaviar 160gb sata ;~}

Very, very bad idea to swap hard drives with an OS on it from one system to another. I also suggest trying a System Restore to a time before the swap, but I have a feeling that it will not work.

JimC5: As to the registry, that's possible and I will follow up on it, but I'm not sure that's the problem. The original master drive was not even placed into another computer, it was just temporarily swapped out so I could fix another hard drive (which I found had died). I can't imagine how the registry would have changed on the original master drive if it wasn't put into another computer. I didn't do a system restore because I figured that the hard drive itself would not even notice that it had been swapped out and back in, as the hardware would have been the same. indigian: I'm very sure that the cables are secure and not broken in any way. Yes, I did put another master drive in my system- it was basically a last-ditch effort to see what the hell was wrong with this other hard drive. I realize that's a bad idea, but I really had no other choice and there were some important files that I needed to get at. I figured that drive was probably toast anyway and I'd have to reformat it at best. The BIOS was the first thing I thought of, and after checking it, everything was *exactly* the same as it had been. ham30: Yes, I know it's a bad idea. Again, I didn't think the hard drive would even notice the swap, so I didn't think a system restore would be necessary. Thanks for the help... I'll look into the registry, but I'm not sure that anything will come up.

An update: While my registry had several problems, correcting them did not fix the overall issue.