About half the time that I start my Dimension 8200 (XP Professional), it doesn’t recognize that my hard drive exists. The other half of the time, my hard drive loads without any trouble.

When it doesn’t work, I use the old trick of booting to system setup, turning on caps, scroll, and num lock, then pressing Alt+E, Alt+F and then Alt+B. This always works and my hard drive opens.

Could this be a loose wire from my hard (C) drive to the computer?  Or, could my hard drive be about to die (very bad)? Or does the fact that the IDE Device detecting trick works all the time mean that the hard drive is OK?

I’ve run the entire Dell diagnostics (took 7 hours), and also checked the device manager for conflicts. There were none. I haven’t defragmented the hard drive in two years. Now, I’m afraid to. Could this be the problem?

Please some very smart person...give me some guidance. Thanks  Ken Gold