Topic awaiting preservation: Problems with XP and new comp

My computer died recently, the processor shot craps so I bought a barebones (case, mobo, ram, processor) system and dumped 2 HDs, DVD, CD burner, and wireless, sound, video cards into it.

Everything was cool with that, it started right up and I inserted my XP upgrade CD. Well, the CD for whatever reason couldn't find the previous install on my HD and wouldn't let me proceed. When this happened I had the following IDE config:

Primary Master: HD1
Primary Slave: HD2
Secondary Master: DVD
Secondary Slave: CD Burner

Ah crap. So I pulled the IDE cables and tried the following:

PM: HD1
PS: DVD
SM: HD2
SS: None (I left the burner out for now.)

Booted up, ran the XP Upgrade CD and it found the previous install no problem. (I was running the repair feature, not the full reinstall.) It went through it's little song and dance and everything booted up and I could use my new computer.

Well then I shut down to install the CD burner and my IDE cables weren't long enough to reach the CD burner so I switched back to:

PM: HD1 (Jumper set to master)
PS: HD2 (Jumper set to slave)
SM: DVD
SS: CD Burner

Then when I went to reboot I got a "fatal error dumping to physical memory" error. Crap.

So I popped the XP upgrade CD back in and suddenly it can't find the previous installation again. I have no idea what the hell is going on and why it had no problems. The other thing is that if I run the repair utility from the initial screen it finds the Windows install and I can browse through in a DOS environment.

I have no idea where to go from here. My other problem is that I can't find my original full Win ME installation disk so I can't just proceed that way.

Any clues why it would have no problems finding the install in that second IDE config but not in the other IDE config?

(And please guys, spare me all snarky Linux and Mac comments, I know how some of you feel and that's fine, but it really doesn't help me.)

:::11oh1:::

[quick_reply] You certainly tried to plug and unplug the HDs. But the IDE cables may not be plugged correctly or there may be some dust causing some errors of access. [/quick_reply]

Yeah, I tried all that. The thing that is throwing me off is that if I select repair from the main menu, it takes me to that DOS prompt where I can see the XP installation.

:::11oh1:::

XP: The biggest joke in the IT world... next to Microsoft!

Sorry krets I'm a bit stumped with that one too.
When you say the second config worked without the CD burner (because of the short IDE cable) does that mean that if you got a longer IDE cable the set-up will work?
Again sorry that I can't be more helpful. If you are still stumped I can post the problem up on ProNetworks to see if they have any clues.

Unfortunately I had to go out of town yesterday so I didn't have more time to toy with it and get a longer cable but yeah, that's basically right.

When I get home on Tues I'm just going to unplug everything and start all over. If all else fails I can just get an old copy of Windows from one of my friends to use with the upgrade CD.

It just doesn't make any sense to me why one config would find it without problems and the other config won't.

When I look in the BIOS everything is set up OK with the masters and slaves identified correctly as well.

:::11oh1:::

Good luck with that, I'll have my fingers crossed for you.

I had this exacty same problem.

As long as I had my regular CD-Rom, I could find the winXP partition. The moment that I tried it with my CD-RW, it wouldn't find anything.

I still have no idea why, and if I try to run the computer with both the CD-Rom and CD-RW, it will not find the WinXP install on the HD.

*shrugs*

Strange thing is, on my other computer, with exactly the same configuration, everything works fine. I can boot with CD-Rom and CD-RW. Just the processor is different (although both are from AMD).

Well I finally figured it out.

Apparently sometimes a repaired version of XP won't be recognized as valid by the upgrade. So I had to borrow my mom's copy of XP home and use that to validate the install. Once I had that copy I was able to install with no problems.

Somehow in the middle of that my 40 gig HD shot craps too so now I'm down to one 80 gig drive but besides that, I'm back up and running.

:::11oh1:::