Computer help again... please :(

[Sazabi]

Ok, so one of the hard drives that I'd received for the desktop didn't want to work, and it wasn't showing up in the device manager, so off it went back to Amazon for replacement; I had the replacement show up today (awesome service from them, by the way); well now - and I seriously hope I didn't send back the good hard drive by mistake  - when I turn on the computer, it's saying Windows didn't load properly, and to install the Windows installation disk and restart, despite it already being in the optical disk drive.  It's not wanting to load at all.  I've tried rebooting with only one hard drive or the other, I've reconnected the SATA data and power cables, and I am lost.

So, yeah, what did I smurf up and how do I fix it?

[badwolf]

Have you got the main hard drive, I guess with an OS on it, set as master and the master ribbon cable attached to the right drive post pics if possible, here or by pm, show cables and backs of hard drives, does that make sense

[Sazabi]

I did; I'm just kinda worried that I'd mixed up the hard drives I was going to send off now.  Let me try booting it with just the hard drive that I kept and one of the optical disk drives first; if that doesn't work, I'll take pictures and hopefully the mess of cables will make sense. :/

[kd8fre]

It kind of sounds like it's not booting from the optical drive like it should.  When you first turn the computer on, there should be a Function Key (F1-F12) that you can press to choose the boot device.  Then use the arrow keys to select the optical drive and press enter.
If that doesn't work, shoot me some specs on the Motherboard and drives and I'll see what I can dig up.

[Sazabi]

Just having the new hard drive plugged in allows for the computer to get past the "Windows will not boot" stage, and it'll let me install Windows to that hard drive; I'm going to try booting the computer under Linux and see if I sent back the wrong hard drive by trying to access the top HDD.

[Carlos]

If you use some linux live distribution (eg knoppix), you can check if each hard drive is available (regardless its contents). Eg, for SATA hdds: fdisk -l /dev/sda; fdisk -l /dev/sdb

[Sazabi]

I'm currently creating a new DSL Linux USB boot drive to do just that - my old USB boot drive kinda went kaput somewhere.  In the meantime, I just wanted to say thanks to badwolf, kd8fre, Carlos, and Steve, for your help.  Will post again when I have something to update.

[Sazabi]

Ok, update time:  For whatever reason, Damn Small Linux did not want to load on the beast via USB, it gets to the DSL bootloader, but stated Knoppix couldn't load for whatever reason; mind you, it loads fine onto my laptop via the same USB drive, but whatever.

I reinstalled windows, but onto the new hard drive; the computer boots up fine now, however the original hard drive does not show.  It did show up under the Windows installation screen, though, as a viable installation drive, but for whatever reason, disk management does not show that drive.  The two hard drives in the computer are the same brand and capacity:  Seagate Barracuda 7200 RPM 500 GB internal drives.

[Mr. Whippy]

There's a disc utility in Windows (at least in XP) that let's you see named and unlabelled drives connected to the computer.  If the second drive is unlabelled (maybe not the right term), you won't see it and can't access it from My Computer.

You can see if it's connected to the system (again in XP) by going through the control panel and opening adminstrative tools.  Use Computer management and it will show all connected drives and their labels (or unlabeled) status (bootable etc).

[Sazabi]

Thank you, Mr. Whippy; I was able to assign a new drive letter to the hard drive.

Everything is peachy now; I just need to reinstall Photoshop and BreezeBrowser Pro.

>.>  I bet $10 that the hard drive I sent back was perfectly fine and that doing what I just did would've worked.