Windows Won't Load With Second Hard Drive

Hello,

I was having a dilemma that I was wondering if anyone could assist me with.
My laptop has two hard drive ports on it. I have an old hard drive, from the same laptop, that I am trying to take some files off of it. However, whenever I attempt to load my laptop with both hard drives installed, the laptop only boots to the black screen with the windows icon and does not go beyond that. It’s been a couple years since I had used the second hard drive and from what I recall, I think I had this problem in the past when trying to get files off of it. However, I can’t remember what I did to allow the laptop to load.

Information:

Operating system: Windows 7
Laptop: Acer Aspire 7750G-662

Both hard drives appear in the system BIOS when I load to that. I’ve tried changing the boot order in the BIOS and I’ve tried switching which hard drive port each hard drive is in and the same issue occurs. The second hard drive had originally stopped booting windows in the past and I switched to the current hard drive I am. However, a couple years ago, I was still able to boot windows from my current hard drive and transfer files from the old hard drive, and I’m trying to do that again.

If any other information is required – please let me know.

Thank you in advance for any assistance.

I had something similar happen to me with my desktop. the second hd was going bad and it prevented the computer from booting. as soon as I disconnected the second drive, all was fine.
Get yourself an external hard drive enclosure and then plug it in to a usb port after booting. if there is any life left on it, you should be able to get to your files
BTW, welcome to the BBS
Sven

Or make a bootable stick with Partition Wizard and boot with that, then go to the old drive and kill the active flag.
Should work fine after that.
Art.