"move the little jumper from slave to master"

Since John hasn't got here yet I'll have a bash...

You may or may not 'need' the jumper. (Depending on the weather - sorry! - it's April 1 here...)


BTW, I know nothing specifically about XP - or Vista.

Hardware:

Drives on the IDE bus can be selected in either of 2 ways - CS (Cable Select) or Hard Assigned - for this second way, you need to have one jumpered to Master and the other jumpered to Slave

For the CS method to work - you need both drives jumpered to CS - and then the wiring can handle it automatically.

With the (now officially not Politically Correct!^***) Master/Slave method - one MUST be set Master, the other MUST be set Slave - if they are both set to the same or one is set to CS - at least one drive, or probably both will not work - I don't know if any permanent damage can be done to either the drives or interface, - but you just mustn't do that! :-)


"message as the computer shuts down that tells me that something failed to initialize."

Wouldn't be surprised if that is something to do with the drives. It may be something to do with that drive SW (patch).

WHen the system is running, have a look at the Control Panel setting stuff that tells you whether your hardware is all being correctly recognised, that may help.


^*** I'm NOT making this up you know!