When Things Go Very Bad

[Codifer]

Good advice Thandal. However, while I can set my hdd to master there is (as far as I can perceive) no "slave" setting for the daughter's drive. It shows only "Master on/Slave off", cable select or none. The fine print (to my old eyes all print is fine) recommended setting is "cable select".

 

I will keep trying. Option I have not tried yet is setting my hdd to "master" and hers to "cable select".

 

My hdd is a 500gb Western Digital Caviar Blue and the daughter's is a Maxtor 200gb. Both PATA.

 

I will be heading to Fry's soon to check on the PSU upgrade cost for my computer and to check out daughter's hdd.

 

We shall see.

 

Cheers

[Thandal]

Ok, you didn't provide the exact model number so this may not help, but all three of the possible configurations for a standard "Maxtor ATA drive" just use "No Jumper Set" (since a single pin jumper is the same as no jumper) to designate the Slave.

 

http://www.dragonagenexus.com/imageshare/images/1678793-1291240585.png

 

So I'd say, worth a try! :thumbsup:

[Codifer]

Thanks again Thandal. I did find online the same diagrams for Model 21. I should have checked here first. I will try setting mine as master and hers with no-jumper slave... I wonder why this was not indicated on the sticker on the hdd. I still wonder that, in the BIOS, when I highlight "slave" and do the auto detect there seems to be nothing to detect. But perhaps the jumper position would supercede that instruction. My hdd has ten pins with #s 5 and 6 jumped to be the master. We shall see.

 

I never made it to Fry's.... perhaps tomorrow.

 

Thanks again and cheers.

[Codifer]

I am very certain now that when Mercury went retrograde this time it did so with a perverse passion. Shortly after Daughter's computer went blooey, Wife's monitor chucked it in and my computer went into a perpetual log on-log off loop. I grew a bit tired of guessing and crossing fingers to see what the catch of the day was to be whenever I tried to start up in the morning. I also grew tired of cranking up the repair console on the XP disk and running "chkdsk /r" or doing a re-install. Heck, I was inserting the XP disk more often than I was DA Origins. So I went into hock.

 

Wife got new monitor. I bought a new mother board for Daughter's rig and then I bought a new CPU and then I bought two new sticks of memory and then I bought a new DVD. When her power supply went out it took everything but the fans.

 

In the meantime I got the Daughter one from Craigslist that was better than her old one. It seemed a great deal as the builder/seller was a computer tech student who more needed a lap top.

 

Then I got the bright idea that all I needed to do to improve my situation was to install on the Daughters old (now new) set up a clone of my XP install on a SATA drive. THe new mobo has four SATA ports but just the one IDE port.

 

Not that easy.

 

XP Pro was produced before SATA hdds became common. The XP install disk could not recognize the SATA drive (even though the mobo did). Of course XP could recognize the SATA drive after the correct drivers were installed which was a simple matter of running the mobo set up disk AFTER XP was installed. What fun.

 

I bit the bullet again and bought Windows 7 (and a new Video Card). I guess that it was time to move on from XP anyway. The thing that galled me was that the asking price of Windoze 7 Pro at Fry's is $294.00! I had figured that, for that money, I could install it on more than one computer..... not so. What I wound up getting was the $144.00 oem version of Windoze 7 Pro without the pretty box, without the manual and without any hope of Microsloth's tech support (I won't miss that). For my intentions now, I got the 32 bit (I only installed 4 gigs of RAM anyway). The 64 bit will be for the next machine I build.

 

But, in the middle of all of this, the worst thing happened which put a heartbreaking halt to working on computers. My wife and I lost a dear partner and friend of 18 years, a Border Collie named Cody.He died in our arms when his warrior's heart finally gave out. Codifer (yes, I borrowed his nickname) was such a central figure in our home and in our lives. It is just today that I feel like resuming the sorting out of the computers.

 

I will update when I can.

 

Codifer

[Thandal]

Sorry to hear of your seeeingly unending series of bad breaks. Have had more than a few "four-legged members of our family" leave it suddenly. Take care the important things in life, and get back to the games only when the time is right.

[Codifer]

Thank you Thandal.

 

In my years, the ones whom I have loved that possessed the purest of hearts seemed also to have four legs and fur. Your words tell me that you know what that loss is. I thank you sincerely.

 

Codifer

[Codifer]

Hell, if Bill Gates had a puppy that he really loved..... I might hold him in higher regard.

[naomis8329]

Just as an aside, not being a PC professional in any way, shape or form lol. I have a secondary disk in a Windows XP machine (which is 8 years old). When I had the second hard drive installed it uses a SATA cable and needed Raid controllers to work. I've recently had to do a total wipe of my C: and reinstall of just about everything, however to cut a long story short the second drive would not show up until I installed the RAID controllers, hey presto there it was.

 

It may not be relevant here, but I thought it was worth a shot as the lady's system is an oldish one like mine.

[Codifer]

Thank you Naomis. I finally got it sorted by building a new machine using the SATA drives (becoming harder to find PATA drives now or Motherboards to hook them to). The faithful old machine is resting comfortably now and I will get back to it with a clean install of the dreaded XP Pro at some point. It will be storage and word processing only.

 

At least I did not relieve my frustration by taking an ax to the whole shebang.

 

But I did begin to remember just how delightful and simple books were. Books never overheat, explode, get viruses or drive you mad by repeatedly opening and closing by themselves. Their only vulnerability is spilled wine or a fall into the bath water. I can handle that.

 

Cheers