Hard drives showing up as devices in new XP install

[faromic]

I've used XP for a long time. I switched to Vista and now decided to dual boot. I'm expecting to use majority of XP. Anyways, I installed XP on a single hard drive. I previously had it installed on my RAID 0 array where Vista is now installed. There reason I tell you this is because I have several questions. First, is there a large performance difference between XP on a RAID 0 partition (the raid 0 is made up of 2 raptors) and a single 16MB cache 250 GB WD hard drive? It's only been a week, but I'm noticing the XP install is acting up. Maybe it's just me.

Second question, when I boot somehow the computer thinks there are 2 XP installs on the computer and the menu with 2 XP installations comes up. I'm not sure which install to delete on the boot.ini tab in msconfig. I'm assuming the second one??

The last question: Everytime I boot into windows XP the XP install recognizes the hard drives and I get the "found new hardware wizard". I have several drives. The single non raid drives are installed themselves with no problem. The two hard drives that make up the raid array won't install. if I run the found new hardware wizard, it says it can't find a driver for the device and the the single RAID 0 drive doesn't show up the XP. I don't necessarily need it since Vista in installed on it, but it should show up right away so I don't have to go through the wizard each time i boot up. Also, the hard drives, even the one XP is installed on, show up in the "safely remove hardware" window if I open it. I noticed it when I was removing a jump drive. I've never seen this before and don't know how to fix it. Do I have to install drivers for hard drives. The hard drives are SATA.

I'm using a EVGA 680i mobo

 

[function9]

I'm not sure which install to delete on the boot.ini tab in msconfig.

I do believe the OS installs are listed starting with the most recent install down to the oldest.

Also, the hard drives, even the one XP is installed on, show up in the "safely remove hardware" window if I open it...I'm using a EVGA 680i mobo

This really doesn't affect anything. Starting I think with their NF4 chipsets Nvidia gives the ability to hot-swap SATA drives. The only thing I would make sure of is in the device manager, under properties for each drive, just make sure it's set for "optimize for performance".

Everytime I boot into windows XP the XP install recognizes the hard drives and I get the "found new hardware wizard".

I don't know if this will help, but do you happen to have any kind of card reader/external drive or those 12-in-1 media drives hooked up? In the past I've had a couple motherboards where if I booted up with some type of usb drive hooked up it would mess with the boot sequence and getting into Windows the new hardware wizard would pop up.

 

[faromic]

Yes, I have been booting up with a USB jumpdrive plugged in the back. Maybe this is it??? I'll take it out and see what happens.

Also, I forgot to mention the computer won't restart or shutdown. It hangs after I go to shutdown. The monitor turns off and everything, but the machine won't power down.