Hi,
I'm adding a Maxtor HDD to my existing system.
When I fitted it and looked at my current, single hard drive it had the grey, slave, cable connector plugged into the back - even though it showed as a master. The Maxtor drive was going to be the slave so I put the black master connector into the old drive and the slave into the Maxtor. They were both present in the BIOS.

My Windows XP Home is on a secret sector on the old hard drive. When I start up, Windows runs to the screen where the 3 green bars run under the Windows Logo, then the screen goes black (normal). Then the green monitor light goes amber for a few minutes, it eventually goes green again but Windows does not load.

Has anyone else had this problem and can you tell me a solution please?

Sorry about the long first post - but as you can imagine the problem is maaking me a little twitchy(

I am assuming that with only one drive on the ribbon perhaps the master/slave configuration was moot?

As a test you could see if you can boot with the new drive disconnected & the old drive plugged into master/black ... also see how the jumpers are configured?

The fact that windows starts to boot is strange ... if it were a drive issue i would expect the OS not to be found ... can you get into safe mode?

Did you boot Maxblast? ...

Maxblast 3

(That's a setup program from Maxtor for installing new drives.)

Wonder what you mean by "secret sector" on your old drive? But if it used to work, it doesn't matter; just curious.




Just typing out loud ... anything here help?

good luck!

I agree with your first point Jephree - that's the first thing I'd look at too. Sounds like both drives have the jumper pins set to the Master position, which overrides the cable position.

Hi, Thanks for the replies.
The original drive had no jumper in it. No jumper on the Maxtor sets it to slave. I tried that first. Bios showed master and slave but could not get windows to run after the Windows logo and the 3 green bars travelling underneath. Tired running Maxblast but it came up with an error. Tried jumper in the original and none in the Max - no boot! Errrrm...... then I dropped the black jumper.... currently still not found. I have another and will try again.
Windows is stored on a hidden sector on the harddrive - I didn't get a cd rom. I couldn't understand how part of windows would run but not the rest and wondered if it could start on the one sector and complete with the second?
I will try all combinations and see if I can load the Maxblast in safe mode but I don't know if cd support is in my safe mode.
I'll let you know how it goes.

don't know if MaxBlast will help, but from the link posted above you can create a bootable floppy ... i never used the cd i got with my drive cause the download was an update ...

can you use a different ribbon? leaving your original as it was & hooking the maxtor on another ribbon? perhaps as a slave on your cd ribbon?

i would still be curious if you can go back to the original setup with no problem?

i am still confused as to the sector situation, but if it worked the way it was i dont see why "it" would be a problem now.

i also have a diagnostic boot floppy from Maxtor called PowerMax, but i cant find it online anymore ... will keep looking

good luck & stop dropping those jumpers

Hi Guys,

I re installed the drive new jumper in the master drive, master and slave plugs in the right drives and ...

BIOS recognised it!

Maxblast encountered a problem every time I tried to run it so I visited the Maxtorkb.com site and they told me how to initialise and format the drive using XP. It is recognised and working and I'm happy. Still don't know what went wrong the first time or why Maxblast won't run.

I can recommend the Knowlege base at

www.maxtorkb.com to anyone having troubles in future - it was most helpful!

Great - thanks for the update