Hi People, I've had my pc for about a year now with no probs, today I turned on to get the error about 80 Conductor cable not installed. There is nothing new on my pc, hardware or software, I turned it off last night, turned back on this morning to this message. It kept restarted halfway through starting windows until it eventually loaded, and more randomly when i turn on my pc the bios freezes before even detecting HDD or DVD drives. When it des start it seems sluggish, suggesting its running at ATA33. I'm using the Diamondmax 9 HDD, which supports 100/133, and as I said, its been fine for 12 months until now. I've swapped the cables arund but still get this error, also tried cables from my other pc and keep getting this problem. And yes I tried a different hdd. Is there anything elese this could be since I no it isnt the cables, or the hdd thats at fault?

If it isn't the hard drive or the cable, that leaves the motherboard controller.

One long shot. I have seen strange problems caused by power connectors that had a spread pin. Try using a different power cable for the hard drive.

You do know the difference between an 80-wire & 40-wire IDE cable, don't you?

I had the same problem. It turned out to be a jumper problem. I had the jumper set to master when there should have been no jumper at all. The hard drive said no jumper for a single drive. Hope that helps.