I have a 10GB hard drive, 1100KHz AMD Athalon processor and 512 MB RAM. Just bought a 80GB hard drive to run as a slave. Set it up as a slave and comes up as a slave in the bios. Go through login and to my desktop with no problems but then no "found new hardware" comes up and after about a minute the computer just reboots! I then get scan disk come up. I then go through to the desktop again and however many times I do get the desktop, the computer reboots all by itself. I have had the first bit of the wizard come up a couple of times, where it says "found new hardware" and underneath says "hard drive" but still crashes and reboots after about 60 seconds. I've tried to go into control panel and click on add/remove hardware but it says that hardware wizard is being used, so it is trying to install it. I think my processor isn't big enough to cope with it or there's a problem with Windows 2000. Can anyone solve this problem? Is there a way to install harddrives in MS-DOS, or before I get to the desktop? or do I need to get a larger processor/motherboard?

i've been using a master / slave hd setup for a long time. never have i come across Win2K saying it detected new hardware. make sure the jumpers on new hd are set to slave, and that the IDE cables are connected right. i would in fact check your BIOS. in there it'll tell you what it finds as primary and slave. another suggestion is to boot into Safe Mode and play around in there. i'm sure you could do it from DOS, but i've never used it, and don't know how.

err! MSDOS where is that in W2K???? If the setup is correct ie jumpers cable then W2K should add drive and allow you to format. You have a hardware conflict try setting your BIOS setting to NO P'n'P O/S

I've installed many slave HD's in Win2000 computers without any problems. First thing to do is to disconnect your current master drive then set the new drive as master and install it with Win2000. That will rule out any defects with the drive itself. Then set the other drive as a slave and put on the secondary IDE port. Then go into your control panel, then aministrative tools. Click on disk management under storage. You should see both drives listed in the right window both on the top and the bottom. If all is ok, switch the drives back and see what happens with that. Also one more thing, check you motherboard's bios ( you will see the version when the computer is starting up. It is on the upper left hand corner of your screen. ) and make sure it can handle drives of that capacity. If it can't you might have to flash your bios meaning updating it. The website should have files and instructions for that. Good luck.

Is it a Western Digital WD800JB, by any chance? I had a very similar problem just a couple of days ago... See http://www.computing.net/windows2000/wwwboard/forum/48581.html

Had EXACT same problem myself installing new HD on the in-laws PC. My fix was to turn off the external HD they had attached until the new HD was recognized and the PC finished booting. I then simply turned the external back on and all was well afterwards. Doubtful thats your problem, but there may be some conflict with another piece of hardware on your system. Figured the info may help, good luck.

Expecting a older 10gig drive being able to run a 80gig drive is a bit of a stretch. Different hardware and addressing from the 10gig model to the 80gig model. Set the 80gig as master on the 2nd ide channel and I bet your problems go away.