I have two hard drives and they seem to have swapped places automaticaly??

Question

I recently bought a brand new intel pentium as i dropped my athalon 27000 and the repair cost was quite high.I kept the athalon box but had the computer shop install my 160 gig hard drive into the new pentium as a secondry drive.All was well until yesterday morning when i started up the computer and it started to do a few funny things at start up and i thought --this looks like my old computer??
I then noticed that a lot of the icons on my desktop were from the other computer.I initialy thought that all of the programs etc had somehow jumped over from the old drive wich is --d--into my main --c -drive.
But my wife opened up a new word doc and typed a few words and named the doc then saved it.Then she went to c drive and searched for it and discovered that it had saved it to d instead.--So we now think that the drives have somehow swapped places??-Can i reverse this so that c is the default?~~is this the problem?? or is it something else.~~theres no viruses how do i fix this??

Answer 1

Either bring it back to your pc shop, or open the case yourself. It's quite easy if your careful.
1) power off & unplug
2) Turn the case on it's side (with side that opens up( face up))
3) Ground yourself (like touch the outside of the case or something else metalic to discharge any static.
4) Open the side of the case.
5) Look where your ribbon cables go (usually gray, about 2" long and flat) There should be one end to your MB (motherboard). The other end, probably has 2 connectors, one at the end and one almost at tht middle,
6) Your original drive should be connected at the end, your 160gb drive should be connected at the middle. IF NOT, it needs to be switched.
-->
Some people say you can just change the jumpers, perhaps this is your problem. Before you do anything, go to your hard drives(s) website, under support, for jumper settings

Email me with your HD make & info, if you would like and I'll get it for you.

Answer 2

It sounds to me as if you have 2 OS's on 2 drives. When you bought the new Pentium, it came with it's own HD. Right? So it might have an OS on it. And, since the shop transfered your old HD into your new system; they didn't bother to overwrite the startup command line for where to boot from.

You need to double check your boot.ini to see where your OS is loading from.

search for boot.ini and open in notepad

Your main boot directory should look like this:

[boot loader]
timeout=30
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Windows XP Media Center Edition" /noexecute=optin /fastdetect

Where multi should be 0. This means your system is not set for multiple operating systems. Disk 0 is supposed to be your main C drive. Your OS is located on the first (1) partition of C HD.

If need be, retype the line to your specs.

Or restart your computer with your OS CD and erase the old OS from your D HD.

The choice is yours. Good luck!

Answer 3

When the computer is Starting pressing the DEL or F2 keys would take you to BIOS Setup screen. Go to Advanced Page and Select the Secondary hard Disk and select Disable.

This would disable your second hard disk at BIOS level and your system should start from your new hard DISK.

Things like this doesnt happen automatically.

Someone might have fiddled with your system settings.

Becuase you can change drive letters from Windows itself.

If you still have any further clarifications feel free to contact me :)

Answer 4

ok i dont know how or why it happened but your old hard drive copy of your os should not have booted on your new system. it should have blue screened of death on you as the amd system drivers would prevent it from booting on a p4 system.

check your jumper settings on your hard disks set you new drive to master and old one to slave

check cmos settings so that its not set to cable select

once you boot into your new drive version of windows backup all your important stuff (stuff you dont have an installation cd for and work files, email pst files, music etc)

then format the old drive.

Answer 5

properly i comprehend you will not be able to in basic terms grab a not basic tension out of a computing device and stuff it into yet another one whether they're the two HP's You gota set the Bios as properly from the Cdrom/DVDROM and format/reinstall abode windows whenever you place a sparkling not basic tension in. Are you effective they're the two a similar sort of not basic tension to?

Answer 6

Check the jumper switch