Hi,

First suggestion would be a new IDE ribbon cable.

Clear NVRAM reset to BIOS defaults.

New BIOS battery

Run diagnostics on the D: drive, look at the downloads section above.

Is the drive always recognised in BIOS on boot POST.

Spy ware ( Ad-Aware Spybot & Spyblaster ) and virus scans with up todate virus signatures

Clear out anything you don't need from MSCONFIG startup.

Look at the listings on http://www.pacs-portal.co.uk or follow the links in any post by Denny Denham below his signature.

When you reply please advise what O/S you are using

hth

Ceri

Have done everything that you have suggested, except for Clearing NVRAM reset to BIOS defaults and new BIOS Battery.

How do I clear NVRam and where do I get a BIOS battery?

My OS is Windows ME.

The Secondary Harddrive is a Maxtor 40gb.  I think I had stated it was western, don't think it makes a difference.

thanks for all your support. i continue to follow your suggestions.

Here is the link to clear the NVRAM:

http://support.dell.com/us/en/kb/document.asp?dn=1023538#Section2

Go to the Maxtor site and download the Powermax diagnostic here:

http://www.maxtor.com/en/support/downloads/powermax.htm

That will tell you if the drive has a problem. Post back with your results.

AAAAAAHHHHHHH HELP!!

I cleared my NVRam.  And then rebooted, and now when it boots up, it takes even longer, and when it usually goes thru the startup, it tells everything that is loading, ram, keyboard, mouse, etc.  When it gets to the ram, it usually just flashes up 512mb, and now it starts at 0mb and goes up very slowly, in increments of 4mb.

I went back into the BIOS and put my boot configuration back to default to see if it would help it, and it changed nothing.

what should I do?

I also download that diagnostics from Maxtor. 

After you clear the NVRAM, you need to reset the config data (under advanced, boot configuration), then save and restart. You may want to repeat the process.

You mentioned that after I cleared the NVRam, that I needed to reset the config data (under advanced, boot config). 

The link that was posted of how to clear the NVRam didn't work.  I found another link that had the info.  It said to clear the NVRam, to put into maintence mode, and it will enter setup, then reset the config data.  Was that the correct way to clear the NVRam.

Is clearing the NVRam different from resetting the config data.  From you last post, it made it seem like it was.  I have repeated this process 3 times, and still getting errors and a very slow boot.  It did fix my ram problem.

I did the diagnostics on the drive, it said there was an error, then it fixed it.  I ran the test again, and the same error keeps happening.  It is during the test of the SMART enable.

I will continue to follow the suggestions of this thread.

Take the drive out and see what happens. Maybe the drive is fried.

If I unplug the IDE cable to the 2nd hard drive, everything runs fine.