Q: I was surfing the net, then suddenly my computer restarts itself randomly. Its never been back to Windows. At one point I got it to start loading safe mode, then froze. Now all I can get the safe mode select screen, and when I select another option, it freezes immediatly.
I turned out the RAM, so I know this is not the problem. Ive unplugged everything but the keyboard, power and video and still. I get an error message “Secondary IDE Channel No 80 conductor cable installed”. I did some research and everything that I read about this error that says my hard drive can slow, but just keep walking correctly.
My current setup has two hard drives on same IDE cable, and a DVD drive on the other side. I tried disconnecting the secondary hard disk, and the problem still persists.
Any guesses?
thanks
Best Answer: Learn how to stop freezing here:
http://fix-computer-freezing.remove-junk…
Re:In my experience a lot of times Windows crashes have to do with the video driver getting corrupted. Get Driver Cleaner (latest is v. 3.3), install and follow the instructions if you have problems – the instructions for removing and reinstalling the NVidia driver.
Re:i took out my main hard drive, put it in my friends computer as a secondary drive, and used XP's scandisk utility on it. it was taking forever so we went to sleep. he said when he woke up it had finished, but it didnt give a summary.
so I put it back in my computer again and started it up and it worked fine. i'm typing this mesage using the computer that was broke. when window started up, it said "Windows has recovered from a serious error"
so I guess its fixed? i hope it doesnt happen again. anything I can do to prevent it?
thanks
Re:You might also do a ScanDisk while it's in its "foster-care" computer, in that case.
Re:Thanks for the quick replies. The motherboard is about 2 years old. I may mess with the jumper settings on the drive.
Also, the power supply should be fine. I am in a computer lab right now, but i'm pretty sure the PSU is name brand.
I may try to backup my data. I don't have a whole lotta irreplacible stuff.
Also, I just remembered, at one point, I got to a blue screen, and it said something about not being able to load a file, and it started to do a memory dump and froze.
Re:One thing about the 80GB WD drive, if it's all by itself on an IDE cable then make sure to set its jumper to Single Drive or it may stall at detection, it's just a trait they have :confused:
At that age, the motherboard could be failing too. I had a K7S5A that was about three years old and began failing, but the symptoms looked as if it was a HDD failure coming on, not a mobo failure… until the mobo finally cashed in its chips, that is 
If the power supply is generic-ish and you have another suitable PSU that you could test with, you might try that also. A name-brand 350W shouldn't blink at your modest setup but generic ones can be pretty wimpy sometimes, especially if they're getting old.
Good luck, hope something comes to light for you. You might want to put the drive(s) into your working computer and copy out your data, Favorites, etc before getting too deep, so you have the option to do drastic stuff if necessary. You could also give the drive an antivirus/antispyware scan from the healthy rig, perhaps. There's a link to free online antivirus scanners in my signature if you need one.
Re:The specs are:
athlon XP 1800+
512mb pc2100 ram
2 hard drives:
80gb wd 7200rpm
15gb wd 5400rpm
crap dvd-rom drive
gf4mx 440
onboard sound, NIC
biostar m7viw motherboard
crap floppy
crap case
350watt power supply
Re:What brand of drive is the boot drive? Maybe a diagnostic test of the drive would be a good starting point. You can find links to the various HDD companies' diagnostics at the bottom of this page (http://www.omnicast.net/~tmcfadden/guides/build/resources.html) to start with, make a diagnostic floppy or CD-ROM, and run that.
Another thing you might try, as a fact-finding step, is to plug your hard drive onto the other IDE controller on the motherboard. No optical drive, no second hard drive. Some system specs might help us too, partly because they reveal how old the system is.
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