a: drive problems

[johnsmith15]

Hey there,

okay, I had my CPU setup with my 120 Gig HD... I decided to sell the computer, so I took out my HD and got my brother, who I'm selling it to, to buy a brand new 80 gig... I put it in, and tried installing windows xp... no luck, okay, plugged both drives in, now having problems... okay, went into cmos, okay, now we're up and running, got windows installed on the 80 gig, and got an external enclosure on the 120 gig... everything seems real jetset now, except 2 problems left:

1) when the computer starts, it takes a minute or 2 to "analyze the startup disks" and it does this for like 2 minutes, ten it says that there is an error with the A: drive... It asks me to press F1 to continue, now I have to do this every thime I start up the computer, and it is freaking annoying!!! Help me get my computer to start normal!!!

2) I can't seem to get the external drive to be recognized at all, I plug it in, power it up, follow the manual to a "t" but no success... darn I wish this were easier...

Thanks!

 

[Tommy Boy]

is your floppy drive cable connected correctly? try flipping it over. if it's wrong the light on the floppy will stay on all the time
check to see that your usb drivers are installed for the external drive

 

[johnsmith15]

Yes, the A: drive is working correctly now, it's just that when the computer starts up it goes through this very long process to determine which is the startup device, and it takes forever... then it starts up. at first the problem was the a: drive, but I checked the cables and got it back up and running... now, if I could only get it to start up normally! I've went into the CMOS setup and selected IDE-0 as the primary startup, IDE-1 and IDE-2 as secondary and third... but, it doesn;t do anything, when I start my computer it goes through this huge ordeal to start up!

And the external HD is still not recognized by the system! Man, this is causing a lot of trouble as I have to get this thing u and running before I am leaving town tomorrow... HELP!!!

 

[mighty_chick]

does he really need a floppy drive? i have one and in a year i think i used it 3 times...and im in school

 

[trance565]

to install new hdd's u normally need a A: drive i think, least the hdd's instructions tell u to use it so u can get it set up, ummmmm ya, make sure u have ur drivers on the ext. hdd installed, and then to get rid of teh 2 min boot, go to ur bios, and set the boot devices in order, CD,HDD,FLOPPY, that could help i think, or do hdd first, but if u ever need to fix windows with the windows cd u gonna have to put Cd first

 

[mighty_chick]

no i just installed a hard drive and dvd-ram into my buddies computers and he didnt have a floppy and we didnt need one, jsutstuck in our $2.00 copy of windows XP and went...my other friend bought the windows XP disc in Russia!!!

 

[johnsmith15]

okay, got the floppy drive working and all, just my external HD is not being recognized at all... I thought Windows XP recognizes new hardware autonmaticly, but it doesn't at all! And, this HD has got all of my files on it, everything that I need!!! It used to be the primary HD for this computer, but since I took it out and put it into an external case, this new HD running the compuer doesn't seem to even recognize it at all.... what to do????

 

[Tommy Boy]

are all the connectors hooked up properly inside the external enclosure? and I'm not sure what the jumper on the hdd should be, but are you sure you have that right?