Replies

See if you can’t find a BIOS update for your laptop, otherwise, I’m suspicious of some kind of hardware/power failure issue.
One should ALWAYS be able to boot into BIOS.

Clint, F.U.N. downtown, Jerry, satrow
Always something new isn’t there. Since either drive by itself will boot, that seems to rule out drive and pin adapter problems. The BIOS sure looks suspicious; bay 2 must be hooked up, as it only fails to boot when bay 2 is occupied. It could be due to 2 active partitions, one on each drive, but it should have booted before I put the OS on the new SSD. I have as suggested taken this to the Dell Community forum; I’ll let you know what they come up with. Thanks for your continuing help!
John

Possibly a bad ‘interposer board’ (no, I don’t know what that refers to either): http://en.community.dell.com/support-forums/disk-drives/f/3534/t/19055668.aspx

Possible. I installed a new pin adapter on the new Intel SSD; that sounds like the “interposer board” on the Dell forum. The new drive, on which I installed XP-Pro SP3, boots just fine by itself. On our old desktops this would just be a “jumper select” problem to set the old drive as the “slave”. Elsewhere on that forum it was suggested it would not boot with two active partitions; but it would not boot when the new unpartitioned SSD was installed in bay 2. I could try FDISK and reformatting the SSD as a single NTFS partition, or deleting the old C: partition on the old Seagate, but then I don’t have a bootable HDD do I. I would like 2 drives, and I would prefer not to do the hassle of a fresh XP install when I will likely need to do so if I “upgrade” to Win7. Please keep with me.
John

Yes but size specific:

If you have the same era BIOS and cannot flash to a later one and that later one supports larger of different size drives, it may not be possible beyond the narrow scope indicated.

The Ankers are solid by the way, at least as far as using USB power for SSD goes, I’ve never actually used one with the AC and a 3.5 inch platter drive. I have one plugged in more or less permanently running either of two VMs located on the attached SSD.

Hmm. The new drive is an Intel 240 GB. The old one is a Seagate 160 GB. It will boot to either drive, but not both of them. Could it be the total of 400 GB is too much, or the different sizes kills it?

I’ll have another look at the Ankers.

Thanks again for your suggestions.
John

I assume you saw my post at the end of your other thread and it did not apply?

F.U.N. downtown:
Thanks for your previous reply. The data sheet confirmed the Vostro 1700 SHOULD support 2 drives. The reviews of the cable indicated severe problems in some cases (fires, burning smells, etc.) I would like to use the second drive bay for a 1 TB drive after cloning to the new SSD, thus my fixation on booting with 2 drives in the system. Also with both drives operational, I would not need the cable to clone.

Are you able to access BIOS with the two drives installed?
Are you sure your Intel drive is compatible with the laptop you have?
I find it difficult to believe that Dell would brush you off like that, try again, or seek support from their forums.

Clint,
The computer will not go to BIOS with either F2 or F12 with both drives installed. The computer will boot with only the new SSD installed.

Agent (Clark Air BaseSMB US DIV_Malon): “I am sorry. So based on the details you provided, you are trying to configure this system to work with 2 hard drives.”
John Dick: “Correct!”
Agent (Clark Air BaseSMB US DIV_Malon): “According to our record, you only have one hard drive configuration which is set for optimal performance.”
John Dick: “Do I need to change something in BIOS?”
Agent (Clark Air BaseSMB US DIV_Malon): “If you wish to add one more, I am sorry but that is beyond the scope of what we support. If you need further assistance, you have to contact third part support provider or local technicians for assistance.”

I can emial you the entire transcript if you are interested. I will try the Dell forum as you and satrow suggested. Thanks for your replies. I need to get this fixed, as the old drive wiould not boot from a cold start a couple of weeks ago, and required the Dell system disk.
John

Ah two bays, that clears it up for me.

Thought I had it made with two drive bays, but ahh, life is not so simple. Received the adapter tray, pin adapter, and screws yesterday from China. Installed the SSD in HDD Bay 2, but computer would not boot. Selecting F12 or F2 during boot still hung boot. Finally installed SSD in HDD Bay 1, and booted to Installation CD. BIOS recognized 240 GB SSD. Installed XP-Pro SP2 on new SSD, which would then boot! When I put the old HD in HDD Bay 2 the system again would not boot with both drive bays occupied. Switching the drives it still would not boot, or even come up with the BIOS on either F2 or F12. I would still like to clone the old XP system from the old HD, but for some reason the system will not boot with both drive bays occupied, and will not even boot to the system CD. OK Guys: what am I missing here? How do I set up this laptop so it will boot with a bootable drive in each bay, or a bootable drive in Bay 1 and another drive in Bay 2? Owners manual does not discuss. Yes, a clean install is nice, but I lose 6 years of drivers, programs, and upgrades. Why will it not work with drive in both bays? THANKS

The adapter had to have been there didn’t it? Does Dell really use a drive with a proprietary connection? Seems like that would just cost them on margin and space for no gain whatsoever.

Yes, the adapter was on the old Seagate, but these old eyes didn’t see it because it was in drive bay 1, and I was trying to install the SSD in drive bay 2 and then change the boot order in BIOS. Amazing what you can see when it’s pointed out to you. But then, if the Dell folks were trying to help instead of selling me a vastly overpriced drive I would have been much further along. Thanks again dg1261: the tray and adapter are enroute.

In the future, check with your laptop maker’s website for an owner’s manual or a specification sheet
that details the type of upgrade components that are possible.

It may take some digging around, but as you have already found out, performing some research beforehand can save a little pain in the end.

The Dell owner’s manual does not mention the tray and pin adapter. Dell customer service was worthless, and only wanted to sell me a drive for $599.99. Intel finally came through last night by email with the proper info on the tray and adapter. Amazon was accomodating and had already issued an RA and shipping label, but I fortunately had not yet sent it. Thanks again to all of you for the much needed advice. John

Did you remove the pin adapter from the Seagate and transfer it on the Intel?

This picture shows you what the adapter looks like.

I did not see the pin adapter when I had the Seagate out. It did have the tray adapter on it. I will have to go back in and have a look. It would be great if that solves the situation. Much thanks. I’ll get back.

Your computer supports SATA drives and the SSD is a SATA drive, so you should be able to use that SSD on that system. Basically you will need to remove the existing drive and plug the new drive as a replacement, of course after cloning the existing drive to the SSD. Have you considered this option?

I thought it should work also, but the Intel 335 pins are much larger than the existing Seagate Momentus 160 GB Serial ATA, and the new drive would not plug into either of the 2 drive bays. Obvious interface problem when you look at the drives.
Much thanks for your help.

Bruce,

I turned off updates as suggested, but the IETldCache and PrivacIE are still updating. I uninstalled Google Desktop earlier in the week, so these files should not be coming from that. (Google was using 5 GB of memory.) The file formats in notepad look quite similar. Thanks for your suggestions.

John

SpiritWind

YOU WERE RIGHT!!!

A quickscan with Malwarebytes found 10 infected objects, including 4 registry keys and 2 registry values, and fixed all of them. I now have both HP printers back, and also the virtual printers. I will do another complete scan tonight with my backup drive reattached. I can send the notepad log file to anyone interested in the grizzly details.

Much thanks.
John

Hi SpiritWind,

Yes, and the malware slipped past the Symantec AntiVirus that was running at the time with a definition file that was only 4 days old! Some protection.

I will give your suggestions a try in case the worm is still lurking, but it apparently made some registry changes that the running RPC is not serving the print spooler.

John

Hi Jerry,

The only listed service is: Remote Procedure Call (RPC). It is set to automatic, and is started. The executable file is
svchost -k rpcss. I have checked the registry, and the HKey_Local_MachineSystemCurrentControlSetServicesRpcSsstart contains 2. It is noteworthy that the error messages when attempting to install a printer reference the RPC failed or not being available, but Task Manager shows 8 processes running.

John

Yes, I navigated to the spooler folder, and it is empty.