I understand that the laptop drive doesn't have to boot, but the master drive does. When I HOOK the laptop drive up and start the computer the master drive won't boot, I've changed the jumpers on the laptop drive several ways and the same thing happens, although I did try to start the computer without jumpers on the laptop drive and got a message that there were two master drives and needed to go through a SETUP or risk damage to the computer if I continued, that's why I suggested possibly disconnecting the master drive on the desk top and CONNECTING the laptop drive as the master and see what happens that way, I know I shouldn't have to do that but it's not working any other wayTry hooking it up to the SECONDARY IDE cable...I checked to find the only IDE slot there is beside the for the cd drive, is for an FDD cable, I'm sorry for waisting your time with all of this because I need to GET an adapter that will connect SATA to IDE which is what the Master drive is in this computer. Once again I'm sorry for the waist of time I'll be getting an adapter for this and I'll be back.Hook it up to the CDROM cable...no need to buy anything else.Ok I hooked the laptop drive up to that cable, I have the drive set as a slave, when I turn the computer on it goes through the memory test then that's it