Master and slave. I suppose I could try cable select, but I have not played with that, so I am not familiar with how it works. Right, if there is only one HDD, it should be on the end of the cable so that read/write errors are not caused by unterminated connections and the master should be connected to the end of the cable, even if 2 drives are installed. The only thing about my slave drive worth mentioning is, that although it has 2 NTFS partitions, I only have a 2 gig FAT32 backup and swapfile partitionon it that I'm currently using. XP has not yet been reloaded b/c it's a waste of time to load XP until I know that I won't have to reload 98SE. As far as that goes, my current hardware config has been used since system was built in summer '01 w/ no problems until now. Man, I am totally stumped, that i know for sure. It kinda acts like a resource conflict, yet none of the utilities I have used found any problems, either hardware or software. But in light of recently replaced hardware, it seems to be a flaky processor caused from a surge even though I have a surge protector with protection indicator LED still lit. Such quality from our local power utility, but that's a bone of contention not relevant to this forum, though I'm sure the state PSC would love to know about it. Another thing related to freeze-up on shut down, which I had neglected to mention: During POST, the BIOS setup comes up, w/ processor speed setting on 900 MHz default. I have been resetting to 1200 MHz, but I am now running at 900 MHz to see what happens. If it is a dying processor, the next question is can I find a trustworthy, honest online merchant that has one, so that I don't have to replace a (presumably!) good motherboard incompatible with say an XP 2000+ or 2200+ CPU, which seems to be the best price points right now . If I tried to buy a 1.2GHz CPU released approximately 4 years ago from a brick and mortar merchant, they would probably laugh me outta the building. I won't even consider a merchant that has a lot of bad reviews HERE. Like I said, I am stumped, and I don't want to start throwing money at it w/o first being as sure as I can be that it is a hardware issue--I have learned my lesson there very well. Again, I am stumped, any input is GREATLY appreciated. Whoever helps me solve this problem, I will dance at your wedding or at the hearing when your divorce is final, whichever you prefer.