When it came back up the new (only) drive was 'E' with the optical drive at 'D'Â.
MAXBLAST 5 ISO INSTALL
So on my lunch break I went home & performed a repair install by booting from the XP CD (not repair console). As I previously described, it wouldn't boot to the desktop, hanging at the "Welcome" screen, after the XP Logo splash screen. Then I shut down, removed the original drive & moved the new drive to master ("0"). I made the mistake of re-booting & letting the system come back up with both drives still attached. I booted from the Maxtor CD & clicked install & that partitioned & formatted the new drive. I wish I wasn't so damn impatient sometimes! I'm sure this is what the fix was. If you did this, the fix is to delete the offending entries in the original copy before you shutdown and image the drive. Just remember that if you formatted the drive in windows, it's going to create a drive signature and assign it a drive letter saved in the registry at: I just don't want to have to go through that again, if I don't have to. Even then the automated process failed & I had to talk to an Activation Support person & answer a bunch of questions, but he finally did give me an activation code. Windows activation was a hassle because I am using my OEM XP Home CD & the product ID from the COA on the PC, but it doesn't 'Activate' automatically via the Internet, it requires a call to Microsoft.
MAXBLAST 5 ISO WINDOWS
I would prefer not to have to start over & re-install Windows clean, with applications, updates, etc. The mouse is not frozen however, the desktop just never loads. The XP Logo screen appears & then it goes to the blue windows screen that appears right before the desktop loads & hangs indefinitely. I then powered off, removed the 30 GB drive, connected the new 80 GB drive on position 0 (master), still jumpered as CS, but it won't boot into Windows. The copy process took quite a while, as expected & seemed to complete without a problem. I booted using the MaxBlast CD & used the included copy utility to copy the contents of the original 30 GB drive to the newly installed 80 GB Maxtor. The BIOS recognized both drives correctly. When the new drive arrived, I installed it jumpered as Cable Select (CS) on drive 0 (master) position & the existing drive with the OS & apps also jumpered Cable Select on position 1 (slave) on the same IDE cable on the primary channel.
MAXBLAST 5 ISO SOFTWARE
I downloaded the ISO for the new MaxBlast 4 software from Maxtor & burned it to a CD ready for when the new drive arrived. thinking that I could just use the MaxBlast software to copy the data from the 30 GB drive to the new 80 GB drive as I have done in the past (with earlier versions of MaxBlast) I didn't feel like waiting for it to come in, so I installed a 30 GB drive I have on hand, installed XP Home clean, all applications & Windows updates, etc. A Gateway ES300 Celeron 1.8 GHz system I am working on had a failed hard drive, so I ordered an 80 GB drive from Newegg.