System Specs: Windows XP SP2 850 MHZ AMD Slot A Shuttle AI61 Motherboard 512 MB RAM Primary Master - 200 GB Maxtor HDD (shows 132 MB in BIOS and 200 in Windows) Primary Slave - 20 GB Western Digital Secondary Master - NEC 3520A DVD Burner Secondary Slave - Lite-On 52X CD Burner GeForce4 MX4000 AGP Graphics Card Generic 4 Chanel Sound Card Generic Firewire Card OK, here is my plight... Came into my computer room last night to find my machine at a blue screen saying something along the lines that Windows had stopped and to remove any new hard drives, IDE controllers, etc and try again. I'm not sure why it did this but it is possible my three year old was resetting the computer repeatedly. So I try to boot normal, safe mode, etc and nothing works until it magically boots fine. But performance is terrible. So on a hunch I check and my primary master is running in PIO mode! The menu says "DMA if available" but it is running in PIO. So I start to Google and find the people talking about how Windows will knock your drive to PIO if there are too many read errors (my son resetting a ton of times maybe?). So I follow the steps and hack the registry and reboot. It doesn't work. So then I see that Windows says to just delete your IDE drivers in Device Manager and reboot to do about the same thing. So I do.... and hence my woes.... Now Windows cannot seem to load the correct IDE drivers. It did so fine when I fresh installed a few weeks ago. But now it detects it as "IDE Channel" then gives an error saying there was a problem because the driver was not meant for this platform. So I go to AMD's site and get their drivers. It installs a "AMD 751 Dual Channel IDE Driver" but it still loads the bad IDE drivers. I am desperate now. The system runs like crap in PIO mode. Windows will not just load whatever drivers it did when it installed itself and I am stuck. So thanks for reading my book. Very sorry it is so long. But I wanted to give all the info I had. Any help would be appreciated. Thanks. The only thing to do with good advice is pass it on. It is never any use to oneself. - Oscar Wilde 1854 - 1900

did you try safe mode?hit key f8 and it hit first choose the last known working configuration option,then safe mode if that doesnt work

did you try safe mode?hit key f8 and first choose "the last known working configuration" option,then safe mode if that doesnt work,then see whats marked in yellow marks in the control panel device manager

When it was doing the blue screens I did try safe mode and that returned a blue screen also. But it did eventually boot into Windows just fine. Now I am having the IDE driver problems and PIO mode problems. The only thing to do with good advice is pass it on. It is never any use to oneself. - Oscar Wilde 1854 - 1900

Your problem may be due to the MBoard BIOS. In order to properly use your HDrive your BIOS should be 48 bit LBA compliant, and it isn't. Look here for solutions to overcome this problem in WinXP. http://maxtor.custhelp.com/cgi-bin/maxtor.cfg/php/enduser/std_adp.php?p_faqid=960 Additionally, you need to use WinXPsp2 to correct a condition that can cause data loss or corruption even if your BIOS does see the entire drive. Look here for additional info on 48 bit LBA compiance. http://www.48bitlba.com/index.htm

You could try running an O/S repair from the XP disk. Boot to disk as though you were going to re-install and opt for repair (R) on the second screen, NOT the recovery console option. This will then load generic IDE and system drivers back to your system drive (probably C:). Jenny

Thanks for all the help everyone. I hate to say it but I am thinking my 200 GB Maxtor may be failing (after only 5 months or so) because after running CHKDSK it found and corrected a few errors and now the system works fine (after rolling back to a previous restore point to fix the screwing arond with drivers that I did). I am back to UDMA Mode 4 (ack, need a new mobo!) but am thinking I may need to RMA this drive before it dies. The only thing to do with good advice is pass it on. It is never any use to oneself. - Oscar Wilde 1854 - 1900