I am not exactly sure where I should start with my problem, because I don't understand why my computer is and has done what it is doing currently.

I wanted to add a second hard drive to my computer, the hard drive already had an operating system on it with boot problems.
I went to the Bios to check and make sure it's not set to boot device priority and I mixed up the names of my hard drives and put it on 1st boot device priority causing my computer to attempt to boot up and fail.
I restarted and removed the drive and tried to boot up with my old hard drive that was working just fine to get the same error.
I put the hard drive I wanted to add back in and turned off it's priority over the other one and then booted my computer and it managed to boot up, but after two more boot ups it stopped working and I have no idea why.
I've tried many things within the recovery console, with the bios, rebooted many times over the last few days and can't get it to boot it up.
It used to only boot up, get to the Loading Windows XP... screen and then restart without any errors or BSOD, but then it started showing a BSOD after I was messing with the wrong things in the recovery console.
Eventually I got so frustrated that I just deleted the partition to prepare to reinstall windows and now that doesn't even work.
Can anybody help? I don't understand why simply attempting to add a hard drive would cause this kind of a problem.

I seriously doubt anything I described above would allow anyone to help me find a solution, but I've had this happen in the past where I just went to the recovery console and did chkdsk /r and fixboot for it to fix booting problems. Beyond that I don't understand what those things do or whether it's a software or hardware problem or if I have messed up IDE cables or something.

Edit: After I reformatted my hard drive and began installing windows on it, the computer rebooted to continue with the installation, well it wouldn't get to it because it kept crashing due to the BSOD, so I did chkdsk /r + fixboot and now it's installing, that doesn't guarantee that it will work the next time or something. >.> (I'm currently trying to get this to work.)
Also: Even if I do solve the problem, it still doesn't make sense to me that I get operating system boot problems when I change hardware arrangements/add or remove hardware. Especially if it's only a 20 gigabyte internal drive being added because there is extra room.

Post has been edited 2 time(s), last time on Nov 17 2009, 6:21 am by AngerIsAGift.

So hard drive 1 worked fine. Hard drive 2 had boot problems (indicating a problem with the disc). Now nothing works, and you've reinstalled windows on hard drive 1? It would help a lot if you referred to them in this manner too, so we can know which one you're talking about.

Well, it would help significantly if you could tell us what the error was ("...that was working just fine to get the same error." <- this is important!)

What happens on the blue screen? Blue screens are nice because they tell you exactly what's wrong with your computer.

Did it ever fail to post?

My desktop will frequently fail to post if I open it up and mess around in it, because somehow the ram got loose while I was in there, so I just have to reinsert the ram. I'm very happy to have a hex display on my motherboard which tells me the error if there is one. You may have messed something up without realizing it, though that's unlikely. It could be overheating ram or something like that, since I know that can cause both a blue screen or a hard reset.