PC won't boot from IDE HDD when SATA data drive connected

Posted by Kevin on Super User See other posts from Super User or by Kevin
Published on 2012-09-11T05:56:38Z Indexed on 2012/09/11 9:42 UTC
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hard-drive

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boot

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sata

I have an old Pentium 4 system running XP. The machine is set up as an HTPC. It was set up and running well with 1 SATA drive as a boot drive, another SATA drive to store TV recordings, and an IDE drive to store more recordings.

Last week the original boot drive (a SATA drive) failed. The BIOS would no longer recognize it. I had a disused IDE drive hanging around that was large enough for the OS, so I reformatted it and installed XP on it.

Now the system will only boot if I do not connect the remaining healthy SATA data drive. All three drives are recognized by the BIOS, and I have set the boot order so that the IDE drive with XP on it has top priority, but after the BIOS recognizes the drives, etc. I just get a black screen.

I know the SATA drive is functional, because if I hot plug the drive AFTER the system is booted (I know I'm not supposed to do this), I can go into the control panels and mount the drive, and see all the files and folders on it in Windows Explorer.

Any suggestions on what is going on and how to fix it? Many thanks.

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