A few months ago, my desktop PC had a black screen saying the HD was not detected. Like many people running XP, I leave it on all the time, so it had apparently crashed. The first time I rebooted, it said the same thing: primary IDE drive was missing. I checked the BIOS and it didn’t detect the primary drive at all! I opened up the case, unplugged all the cables and made sure they were well-seated again, and this time, it booted up! But a day later it failed again. After going through this a few times, I decided the drive must be bad (it was about 5 yrs old) and I put my newer one in as the primary. Things went fine until last week. Now the same thing is happening again! There’s just no way this drive (only about 2 yrs old, WD) is also going in the same way. I replaced the motherboard about 2 yrs ago with a Gigabyte AMD. I’m wondering if it could be the powersupply, the motherboard I/O, or perhaps the cables. The trouble with troubleshooting is that the drive either works or it doesn’t, so it’s hard to run a diagnostic. I’m about ready to just buy a whole new system and save this for a rainy day hobby project. Any ideas for me? I’d prefer not to buy a new power supply or motherboard without knowing what’s wrong.
Thanks!
