Hard drive question, sort of operating system problem
 

Ok i have windows xp service pack 2 on 2 hard drives.
My computer specs were
1.3 ghz
512+256 memory sticks
250 gig hard drive with windows xp service pace 2

My computer was working for a while. While it was in the shop i took the hard drive out trying to access someof the files
and the computer would reconize the harddrives but with both of them it would just go to a blank screen with a blanking _

The computer specs of one of them were
Hp pavilion xe734
600mhz Cpu
192memory

The other computer i tried was a computer with
200mhz cup
128 memory

Is there a way i can get my hard drive reconized on either of those machines, is it something with the boot records? could i change this?

The hard drives are both maxter and one came with maxblast 3 software

:cry:

Hmmm.... Check the BIOS and see if it is reading the hard drives. To access the files, you are going to have to install an OS. Do you want to put the HDs in your comp with XP? Have you tried yet? Did it work? Please Clarify.

-C

Best thing to do on this cases is to run a linux live-cd and check what's wrong. If you install Windows XP, you risk yourself to delete any file.

oooo maxblast 3, great software.. but that's besides the point.
I have actually seen this error (seeing as i currently have 6 harddrives...) most of the time it occured when the 2 drives on the same IDE have their pins set wrong.
*In case that meant nothing to you, on the back of your harddrive there is a set of 6 or 8 pins in 2 rows, these pins correspond to auto-detect,slave, and master,(not necessarily in that order) there should be a sticker on the top of the drive telling you what order the pins are in. There will be a connector on ONE set of pins. Odds are if your mobo is like mine, it does not like when 2 drives have the same settings, or when 2 drives try to be master.

The blank screen with the curser can occur if the drive is not finding a boot sector, OR if it is finding more than one, and the poor thing gets confused.

*it is possible while your comp was in the shop they swapped pins on you.. i've had it happen to me.. i don't bring my comp anywhere anymore... not that i have since i was 10, lol
make sure the drive you wish to load from is on the end of the IDE cable and is set to master
and try changing the setting on the other drive, to slave, if this doens't solve anything, choose the setting of the 3 not listed above (different companies call it different things, some don't include it at all)
if that still doesn't work, you can try forcing an auto-detect slave on it, by turning the pin connector sideways and joining the top slave and master pins.

Hope this helps - not guarenteed to fix the problem, but for the hours i spend one night with this same problem, this is a good place to start
*and yes my comp bios was detecting both drives as well even when it wasn't loading.