added a 2nd drive, system not available now 1

[FWPIII]

I originally posted this in the XP Pro forum, it was suggested I try this forum as well.

I installed a 2nd h/d and an hp usb printer in my hp pavilion, the original config is 866mhz, 40gb hd, 256 mb ram, xp pro. I added the 200gb maxstor drive for add'l storage. The pc had an open bay for the drive and I followed the instructions per the maxstor directions. The drive installed w/o problems, at one point it asked to make a change in order to recognize a drive greater than 137gb, the change was made the pc rebooted a few times during the process, still no problems. I was able to see the entire 2nd drive thru explorer. The pc took a little longer shutting down but there didn't seem to be a problem.
This morning when I booted up it went directly to the screen telling you there is a problem and asking which boot options you would like to try. I tried booting normally, booting into safe mode, it kept coming back to the same page. I tried booting from the xp cd and getting into the recovery console, i ran chkdsk, it said it fixed a problem but the boot issue remained. I then tried the fixmbr command, it came back and said the pc appears to have a non standard or invalid master boot record, fixmbmr may damage your partitions if you proceed. I didn't proceed from that point. I also disconnected the 2nd drive just as a precaution
I also tried a emergency boot cd, it seems as though the c drive is intact, I was reluctant to try anything that may make the drive unusable. I was eventually able to boot into safe mode, it just took a very long time.
I would appreciate any help with this, I have done various web searched but nothing I read left me feeling to comfortable about fixing this problem.
Thanks

 

[wolluf]

FWPIII - did you read my reply in your original post in XP forum? Have you checked for bios upgrade? Do you know if your machine natively supports drives > 137GB. I still think your problems are down to the maxtor utility (maxblast?) installing overlay software because your machine couldn't cope with larger drive. So I was suggesting you see if there's a bios upgrade which will allow your bios to see the drive without overlay software. Also, if its been installed on your main drive too, you might want to uninstall it before continuing (I think maxlast has an uninstall overlay feature too - though haven't used it for many years).

If bios can't be upgraded - suggest buting a PCI card to allow your machine to use 200GB drive is better option than overlay software.

 

[FWPIII]

Sorry, it's taken so long to get back to people, this has been a comedy of errors. I could not find a bios upgrade through HP, they did point me to esupport.com. You run a utility they give you which collects a lot of interesting data regarding your bios. They email you to let you know they have an upgrade. You have to call them, they first tried charging 79 bucks which I balked at, I got them down to about 40 dollars, they email you the instructions and a link. I tried applying the upgrade but ran into a problem (Flash Rom is write protected) so I will have to call them tomorrow.
I did connect the drive again and now the system sees it but recognizes it as NTFS, my original main drive is FAT32. Can my 2nd drive be reformatted as FAT32.
Thanks