new hard drive issue

[540dude]

I just purchased a Western Digital 320GB Caviar Blue sata hard drive.

I've installed it, and my BIOS recognizes it.

I didn't see anything that I could set it to master on the hard drive, and I didn't see anything that said about setting it to master in the instructions, so I figured you didn't have to set it to master. I set the drive to boot first and my slave drive to boot second, but something must not be correct.

When I try installing my new windows XP CD, this error occurs when it gets to "Setup is starting windows" it goes to a blue screen error and says

"A problem has been detected and windows has been shut down to prevent damage to your computer. Check for viruses on your computer. Remove any newly installed hard drives or hard drive controllers. Check your hard drive to make sure it is properly configured and terminated. Run CHKDSK /F to check for hard drive corruption, and then restart your computer." error 0x0000007b

[zak4994]

I'll ask the current most simplest questions.

Have you tried to boot again WITHOUT the hard drive?

Have you checked that all cables are in properly and not partially loose?

[540dude]

Originally Posted by name='zak4994'

I'll ask the current most simplest questions.

Have you tried to boot again WITHOUT the hard drive?

Have you checked that all cables are in properly and not partially loose?

yes, and yes.

I can put a jumper on the hard drive to set it to SSC mode, or PM2 mode.

Do either of these mean master/slave?

[540dude]

I also have another SATA cable in my motherboard but not connected to anything. It was connected to my old hard drive but it was too hard to reach so i just left it in there.

[Toxcity]

Disable SSC as this can hurt drive performance as it lets your hard drives emit a certain frequency that is different from each other in the idea to avoid interferance.

I am not sure what PM2 mode is but after a quick google I found this - mainly used for server/workstation environments operating in multiple drive configurations. PM2 mode requires a compatible BIOS that supports this feature. If PM2 is enabled and not supported by BIOS, the drive will not spin up and therefore will not be detected by the system.

So I would disable that too.

[540dude]

Yea they're not enabled, I was just seeing if they needed to be.