Help :S

[Sun_Tzu]

Right, I have no clue on this one. I usually can deal with minor computer problems but so far i just cant understand it.

I have a rather old computer. Dell Dimension 4100 which i've basically replaced everything in (old HD crashed, got a new graphics card, etc..). System specs are (gimpy, but i run toa on it. Used to run x2 toa ):
800MHz p3
512 ram
Geforce 3 Mx 440
DVD drive, CD-RW drive, 2x HDs by Maxtor and Western Digital
Win 98 SE

It's got two hard drives in it, my 120GB main and an 80gig secondary...had them installed and working for about 3 months together.

A couple days ago, my computer locked up weirdly while i was playing ToA. I restarted and figured i'd put my music back on, and suddenly came to discover my second hard drive had simply ceased to exist on windows. I was confused so i had a look inside, everything looked fine so i restarted it back up and there it was.

Since then its been happening more often to the point that i cant even get the second hard drive to show up anymore and all that happens is windows has a "problem device" under my hardware saying that my HD doesnt have proper drivers. ...

I checked the BIOS, it is appearing there but when i boot into windows...Nothing.

Help?

 

[Boni]

First bet (70% chance)

Sound like fairly typical symptoms of a hard drive failure, backup all the data on your second drive onto a nice new one and throw the old one in the bin.

One day very soon your 2nd hard drive wont come back.... EVER.


Second bet (20% chance)

Your power supply is failing, failing to pickup various bits of hardware is sometimes an indication of this, your error message sounds more like this is happening as hard drive failures are usualy spotted on bootup... MMX cards like you old GF are especially bad at draining power, check you got a decent PSU.


Outside bet (5% chance)

You IDE cable isnt plugged in propely or has a break, check the wires, replace if possible.

 

[Sun_Tzu]

Sorta-fixed it. I thnk the IDE cable was loose or is failing, as i tried swapping around cables and both HD's worked fine. It was probably loose somewhere

Rah.