Nigel Andrews wrote:
Mart,

Thanks for the quick response.

I have the slave set to Auto in the BIOS (and of course the jumpers set to
Slave on both the replacement)

But booting with the ME start-up disk, with one of my replacement old disks
installed, it doesn't finish booting (or boots to an A: prompt but says C:,
D: etc don't exists!). With the other connected I get to a Minimal Boot, and
can start FDISK but it says it can't access disk 2!.
I thought both these were working, tho' years ago, and they are similar
drives tho' much lower capacity than what they are replacing. Both the
drives 'come alive' during the boot sequences (spinning up and heads
chattering).

Is this showing that they are faulty or is it the format on the disks
themselves which is causing the boot problems?

Well, as Mart says, it's not WinME that's at fault (so far).

Might want to check your cabling as well as the jumper setting on the
(presumed) Master drive; bear in mind that if the original drive is CS
then the cable is actually different from "normal" M/S IDE cables.

Rick




Thanks again

Nigel

"Mart" wrote in message
...

First, you need to ascertain whether this is a WinMe issue or - more
likely - a hardware issue.

Confirm that you can 'see' both physical HDD's in your BIOS. If not, check
cabling AND Master/Slave links correctly set. Have you acknowledged
(detected and set) a second drive in the BIOS?

If OK in BIOS, boot with your WinMe Startup (floppy) disk and confirm that
you can 'see' both disks AND their partitions in Real Mode DOS.

If so, can you read AND write (in DOS) to all partitions.

Confirm the above then worry about WinMe.

BTW - What letter(s) is/are assigned to your CD-ROM(s) - if fitted?

Mart



"Nigel Andrews" wrote in message
...

I am having problems with Windows ME when adding in a working old hard
disk.

After going into 'safe mode' (because I switched off the PC) I get a

blue

screen 'Windows protection error'.
This happens whenever a replacement second harddisk is connected. If I
remove it then Windows starts cleanly.
I have checked that the cable is connected correctly (any other

connection

gets a worse result i.e., No O/S!)

I have treid this with two old harddisks that should be OK. I also had

it

with the orginal harddisk which is why I am trying to replace it.

Any ideas please?
Thanks

Nigel