I was running my comptuer and playing games on night when i went to bed. I woke up in the morning it had restarted and was showing operating system not found. I restarted and had it lock up and freeze several times, i eventually got it up and running where it quickly froze and now when i start it the windows logo pops up and the bar slides a few times and then the BSOD flashes and it restarts.

I have tried several things:

Removing the 2 hardrives in various orders and reinstalling them but no go.

Tried a windows repair, it didnt' recognize a version of windows on my system.

Proceded with a new install but couldn't install to my slave HD.

Noticed that windows set up had changed my drive numbers and had a C and D instead of a C and F drive. Attmeped to install on both drives again. Both times it tried to install it on the C drive. This drive shows empty but when i try to install it shows as needing a full format.

I am utterly confused as to how this could happen and what i can do to fix it. I'm not stupid when it comes to computers but i have absolutly no idea what to do here. Any and all help would be appeciated.

Had you tried, or were you ever prompted to try, Safe Mode Options?

Last Good Configuration... etc. ?

Or Safe Mode w/ CMD. prompt to run check disk?

chkdsk/f
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With a single hard drive installed on Primary Master:

Is it seen in the BIOS?

What happens when you try a Clean Install to this drive?

http://michaelstevenstech.com/cleanxpinstall.html

Tried the safe mode and last knows good config and i got the same thing.

I have to head to work but i will check the bios when i get home with single hard drives installed.

ok i jsut checked my 2 hd's when i have jsut my primary drive plugged into the primary ide there is no ide hd that i can put in the boot sequence. When i plug just my slave into the ide primary it is there in the boot sequence. If i just installed windows xp to that slave drive and made it my primary would i still retain all the data on it? It is a 100 gb drive with like 23 gb free and i can free up a lot more. Hopefully seeking your suggestions.

Sounds like that one drive may be gone. Do you notice if it "spins-up" at all?

As to your XP idea; yes it should work. You will need to partition that drive first so that you have an "empty" partition where you will put XP.

This is a good overall guide:

http://www.michaelstevenstech.com/cl...all.html#steps

After that perhaps you can try the other drive in the slave position just to see if it works at all.

so creating the partition won't reformat the whole drive? it will just create a new section of the drive?

Yes.

The relevant setup screen is here:

http://www.michaelstevenstech.com/XPpro3setup.jpg

"To create a partition in the unpartitioned space, press C."

If you do not have any unpartitioned space you will need to first off re-partition this drive.