Hello, I am primarily using a 200GB SATA HDD. But I also have an IDE 80GB HDD that I am trying to format. So I hooked it up, turned it on, went into BIOS and made sure it saw the drive and didn't try to boot from it, everything looks good. Then when I turn on the PC, I can go into My Computer and access both HDD's, but as soon as XP finds the new hardware, I get the dreaded blue screen. I have tried configuring the setup many different ways (IDE HDD Primary Master, Primary Slave, Secondary Master, Secondary Slave, Cable select on Primary channel, and no jumpers at all). I've disconnected all CD/DVD-ROM/RW drives, still a no go. Any ideas? Here's my specs: MSI K8T800 Neo2 motherboard AMD Athlon 64 3400+ CPU 1GB Ultra DDR PC3200 200GB Western Digital SATA HDD LiteOn SOHD-167T DVD-ROM (Primary Master) LiteOn LDW-411S hacked to LDW-811S DVD±RW (Secondary Master) Floppy drive ATI Radeon 9800 Pro All-in-Wonder 128MB Video Card SoundBlaster Audigy2 ZS Platinum 24-bit sound card ...and the HDD I'm trying to format: 80GB Western Digital IDE HDD
Since it only Blue-Screens when you try and click on it, instead why don't you open Administration Tools in Control Panel and Choose Computer Management. There you can click on Disk Management and you should see all the drives on the Right side. Try and see if you can format it that way. Another method could be to use your bootable XP Disk and boot from it. I would unplug your SATA Boot Drive first and then reformat the HDD with the Install XP Disk. There are some Command Prompt fixes for Hard Drives using the Recovery Console; i.e. fixmbr, fixboot, etc., but I think I would just go through the motions of installing XP and when you reformat the HDD, just cancel the install. It appears to me that you may have a Disk Signing Error or a corrupted MBR on Sector Zero.
Thanks gizmobob, I figured it out. I ended up downloading a bootable CD that is a HDD eraser, that way I didn't have to get Windows to see it.
