I installed a new (much larger) hard drive on my HP515n. I ordered the OEM software from HP and used it to install all of the original programs on the new hard drive. The computer came with Windows XP Home. All went well with that.

But, I am trying to add the old hard drive as a storage drive. I reformatted the old drive. I set the DIP switches on each hard drive to have the new DRIVE be the Master and the old one the Slave drive. I set up the BIOS to boot from the new HD first and hit F10 to save those settings. While the computer initially boots, it shows the new drive as drive 0 and the old drive as drive 1. Seems Perfect, right?

But, then I get "operating system not found" when windows tries to load. I go back in the bios boot sequence and see that it has changed (on its own) the sequence back to having the old drive boot first. I change it (again) to make the new HD first in the bootsequence, and again hit F10. But, it repeats the problem and, upon checking, has returned itself to have the old HD boot first.

If I remove the old drive, it boots fine. But, I also noticed if I have my external USB storage device (or even a thumb drive) plugged into the computer, I get the same problem. Again, I change the BIOS boot sequence to have the new HD be the very first drive in the boot sequence, but it changes itself back.

The issue seems obvious that the BIOS will not actually "save" the boot sequence I selected when I hit F10. Or, it just changes on its own - which I doubt.

Is there a way to fix this? Is there some dip switches on the mother board that I need to change? Or, is the old HD basically useless to me on this computer?

First, what IDE connector is each drive hooked to.

The master should be on the one furtherest from the system board and the slave should be on the middle one.

If jumpering them as master and slave is not working, jumper them for Cable Select (CS) and hook them up as I described.

See if that helps. Some systems don't like master/slave, just CS with multiple drives.

I have the new HD connected at the far end of the connector cable which is labeled "Master". The old HD is on the "Slave" connection. I even swapped out the cables and installed the one hat came with the new HD, but that didn't help.

I have also tried using the "Cable Select" DIP switch settings for both hard drives.

They show up correctly on boot up with the new HD as 0 and the old one as 1. When I hit F1 and look at the BIOS settings, the first page has them listed in the proper order, - the new drive as the Master and old drive as the Slave.

But, when I go to the "Boot" page, the computer seems to default to putting the old HD to boot first. It will even default to putting add-in cards ahead of any HD. This despite the fact that I change the order and hit F10 to save it. But on the reboot, if I hit F1 again - the order has changed back to the previous settings.

Is it possible that the BIOS is corrupted, since it won't allow me to change the boot sequence? If so, would reloading the BIOS (if I can find them from HP) correct this?

Or might there be dip switches I have to change on the mother board to allow me to "save" the boot sequence changes?

As I said, it is not only a problem of being able to use the old HD, but when I have an external HD or even a thumb drive plugged into the computer via a USB port, it will default to try to boot them up first. I always thought that the boot sequence would look for a bootable connection in the boot sequence, and if it finds none, would go to the next device in the boot sequence. Apparently that isn't the case as just having any of these devices connected will not allow the computer to bypass the drives without bootable partitions and eventually get to the C: drive (Master) and then boot into the OS.

Any other suggestions would be deeply appreciated.

BIOS on some systems have two places you have to set that affect the boot sequence. One is where you assign which drive is Master and which is slave, then you have the one you've been using which is boot priority (or something similar).

The HP documentation for the 515n says the jumpers (not dip switches) should be set for Cable Select:

Step 5: Installing a new drive
Use the following steps to install a new hard drive into the PC:
1. If you are installing an IDE hard drive, Make sure the jumpers on the drive are set to Cable Select or CS.

I got that here: Installing or Replacing a Hard Drive

It has additional instructions for entering BIOS setup, etc. Maybe something in there will help.

Have you tried resetting the BIOS? First I would try reverting to the manufacturer defaults and configure it like you need to. If that doesn't work try resetting it with the jumper.

The BIOS is reading the Master and Slave correctly. It shows the New Drive as Fixed Disk 0 and the old drive as Fixed Disk 1 on boot up. On the Main BIOS page, it has the new disk as Primary Master and the old drive as Primary Slave. It has my CD drive as Secondary Master and my DVD drive as Secondary Slave.

Thanks for the correction that I should have been saying "jumper settings" on the drives instead of "DIP switch" settings.

The problem seems to be totally with the boot sequence. I can't get the boot sequence to stay with what I select. I am hitting F10 to save the configuration, but when I go back in after an unsuccessful boot, the computer has changed them to something different - and not necessarily the sequence that it was in when I originally changed it.

It seems to have a preference for putting the Removable Devices first, the CD-ROM Drive second and the Hard Drive(s) third. Within the Hard Drive subset, it prefers to list Bootable Add-in Cards first, the old hard drive [Samsung SV8004H-(PS)]second and the the new hard drive [WDC WD2500JB-000GVC0-(PM) third.

As you can see, the BIOS sees the appropriate PM and PS drives and recognizes them as such.

Having the "Removable Drives" first would explain why it won't boot when I have an external USB drive or USB thumb drive plugged in.

New Info: --------------------

I just changed a setting in the BIOS labeled: "Local Bus IDE Adapter". It was set to "Both" and I changed it to "Primary". The Computer booted up as normal and I could view the old HD. I thought I had solved the problem.

However when I restarted the computer to see if it would work again, on boot up, it said: 02B0: Diskette Drive A error. Press F1 to setup, F2 to resume. When I pressed F1, the BIOS would not see the Primary Secondary Drive (old HD), nor the Secondary Master and Slave drives (the DVD and CD players).

Strangely, I have no Diskette Drive A attached to the computer. (I assume that is a floppy drive).

The first time I pressed F2, to resume: the Computer booted into Windows, but I couldn't see the old HD nor my DVD and CD-R/RW drives.

On subsequent attempts, it would have a myriad of combinations of drives not detected including any of them, so the "Primary" setting on the "Local Bus IDE Adapter" was out.

I did find a BIOS setting (out of the blue) in the Legacy Floppy Drive. I changed that to "disabled". and that got rid of the Diskette Drive Error, but I was still having issues with the BIOS seeing my CD/DVD and the old HD.

Upon changing the Local Bus IDE Adapter back to "Both" the computer saw everything and returned to the original problem of the ever changing boot sequence on each reboot.

So, now I'm more confused than when I started......

Well I don't know what is going on with your computer. It sounds to me like its the motherboard. First go into device manager and look to see if both hard drives and the disk drive show up. If they do right click on my computer --> manage --> disk management. Make sure the optical drive and the secondary drive have drive letters. If they don't right click on them and select "change drive letter and path..." Click on Add, make sure "Assign the following drive letter:" is selected and chose the drive letter that you want. It is preferable to leave A & B for any floppy drives. The next avaliable letter [other than A & B] is selected by default. Click Ok and Ok.

I reset the BIOS (F5), and after figuring out that I have to then manually disable the floppy drive (as there is none), I was having the same problem.

Finally after my 25th time today of changing the boot order to have the new drive boot first, it actually did reboot into Windows XP (SP3).

I went into the disk management (as advised), and everything looks normal. The new HD is the C: & D: Drive. The DVD/CD drives are Drives E: and F: respectively. My thumb drive (when I plug it in) is Drive G: the old HD is listed as drive H: and my external HD is drive X:. (I manually set the thumb and external drives to those letters earlier.) In Explorer, I can access all of the files on all of the drives.

So, everything appears to be working well.

However, I was at this spot yesterday. But when I rebooted the computer to see if it would stay corrected permanently, it did not. This is the first time I have gotten it back into the OS with everything working properly.

Now I'm afraid of ever rebooting the system again! Unfortunately, I see that as a non-possibility.......

By the way, the System BIOS is PhoenixBIOS PTLTD-6040000 ver. 3.24.

Any other suggestions?

Seems like the easiest fix for this would be to buy an external enclosure for the old hard drive and connect it via USB. With the old drive out the system boots correctly, so this should work.

If you decide to do this, I recommend buying an external enclosure that has a fan. It keeps the driove3 cooler and provides longer life.

Not a very satisfying answer but at least you will have a working computer and access to your old drive.

Buying an external casing for the old HD seems like a good idea, but I would have to ensure it is unplugged before every reboot. As I pointed out, any USB connection (including our digital camera, thumb drives, or my external HD) gets put first in the boot sequence.

There has to be a simpler fix or an explanation of why the BIOS keeps changing the boot sequence back to something undesired. If not, I'll just save the old drive or put it in another computer that doesn't have this issue.

Thanks for the help, though!