Hi yall. Problem: Computer crashed and would no longer boot from drive. This was a sata drive, plus I had an identical sata as storage. Both are seen in bios, system drive won't boot, and most importantly, computer won't boot at all, even from cd, until I remove the system drive from the computer. Now no computer will boot if this drive is connected, so I can't even format it or diagnose it. Long story longer, I put in another drive and installed xp. This drive was an ide, cuz I was suspect of the sata (even thought my sata storage drive never got hurt). Ide system drive worked for a week, then died in the exact same way, no boot up if it's connected to any computer. I can't see how a hardware failure could kill 2 hard drives on 2 different controllers in the same way. I'm afraid a virus may have been in the files I restored to the new install, and now I'm worried cuz I put the backup files on a different computer so these people have a computer to use, and I'm afraid their going to fry this hard drive too. Any ideas? Tim

Might be power supply to drives. It would be unlikely in my opinion that a boot virus could stop the CD/DVD from being the first bootable device. "Best Practices", Event viewer, host file, perfmon, antivirus, anti-spyware, Live CD's, backups, are in my top 10

I can make the first boot device the cd, but it still won't boot until I remove the offending hard drive.

Still I think it unlikely a boot sector virus could do that. A bootable device is the first to have code read. A second or other partition does not execute code. "Best Practices", Event viewer, host file, perfmon, antivirus, anti-spyware, Live CD's, backups, are in my top 10

Cost a few bucks but try a usb to sata hd mount like the blackx mount your os on another drive.boot into windows then plug the blackx in and test drive. Suspect either a short on the hd or lba is messed up. If drive mounts in the blackx recover what you can an format it. G\l on the road again!!