On Thu, 19 Jan 2006 02:32:15 GMT, lid (kwng) wrote:

However, this problem is random. Random means I switched off for a few
hours and the HD is bootable and win XP home runs but after a hour or
so,
it hangs or crashes and boto disk failure will happen. When rested the
PC, it works back. I decided to investigate. I found that the
motherboard has 2 IDE slots; one connected to DVD/CDRW combo drive
and one connected to HD. So, I swapped the connection, i.e. HD cable
to the IDE slot initially occupied by DVD/CDRW combo drive and vice
versa. I was very surprised that HD boot up perfectly and Windows XP
home starts. My DVD/CDRW combo drive is detected and still works but
after an hour or so, it does not work, and it is not detected or went
missing (not seen in win explorer). If I plays songs, etc., it will
play but will end up with IO error within an hour or so.


You have two IDE ports on the motherboard. A ribbon cable from one
leads to the hard drive (and only to the hard drive). A ribbon cable
from the other leads similarly to the CD device.

Right so far?

Let's call the motherboard port the HD was originally connected to
IDE-0, the other IDE-1. You say that if you connect the hard drive
to IDE-1 it boots? Check that, please. It's possible, but rather
unlikely.

If you CAN boot from IDE-1, see if your ribbon cables have an
additional unused connector. An IDE bus supports two devices. Why
not ignore the faulty IDE-0 and daisy-chain both HD and CD on IDE-1?
If Acer have been cheap and only provided single-connector IDE cables,
dual-connector ones are cheaply available.

If you DO decide to replace the motherboard, it's almost certainly one
of the two standard sizes, ATX or Micro-ATX. A Micro-ATX board will
fit an ATX case, but not vice-versa. Don't worry about an exact
match. Pick one that suits your CPU and memory type.