HDD or DVD problem?

[Davva]

This has got me scratching my head.

I have 3 HDD's (2 IDE and one SATA). 

Win XP was on the SATA but it stopped working.  When I booted it would just come up with Win/system32 missing. (or something close to that).

I did some poking around and it seems that the PC is not seeing the drive. 

I put the windows DVD in to try a repair but the PC cant see the DVD.

I have been messing around with this for a couple of days and this is where I am.

I can boot to the DVD only if all the HDD's are disconnected.  If any of the HDD's are connected then the PC wont see the DVD drive.

I put an old HDD in but the result was the same.

I have re-installed the SATA drivers and I can see all the HDD's in the BIOS.

I have cleared the CMOS but that didn't help.

Anyone got any suggestions?

[Broni]

Try here: http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=307545

[patio]

Along with trying Broni's link you should unhook all drives except the SATA until the repairs are done...a confused BIOS is only going to slow down the process.
It doesn't make sense that the DVD drive isn't being recognised...check all the cables to it.
BTW is that also a SATA drive ? ?

[Davva]

I had all the other drives disconnected.  The DVD was not a sata.

I've manged to get it working.  The sata drives on the Gigabyte site were wrong and I had to find the right ones.

So now I have re-installed XP and after a couple of updates I dl'd SP2.

Now my computer takes about 30 minutes to boot up!

I  don't know if I need to re-install SP2 or if a further update will make it boot quicker.

I'm getting REALLY fed up with this *censored* thing. 

[patio]

Did you re-install the Gigabyte MBoard drivers ? ?

You should also DLoad and run the diagnostics from the SATA drive manuf. site and use them to create a bootable CD and run the extended drive test...your drive may be going South.