"Pete" <not@this.address> wrote in message
news:dcgCh.308199$QY6.267020@fe1.news.blueyonder.c o.uk...
> Hi
>
> I recently set up a system with an Asus A7A266 motherboard. I installed
> windows ME and all was fine, then the next day i started the machine up
> and got a boot disk failure message.
>
> I used a different power connector and a different 80 wire IDE ribbon
> cable. All seemed ok for a few days till I got another boot disk failure
> message when i booted up. I switched off and on a couple of times and the
> message went away and the computer loaded without problems.
>
> I got anothe error message a few days later so i did a full surface scan
> on the 20GB disc but no problems were found. I changed the hard disk for
> another 20GB one, so now I had changed the drive, the power cable and the
> ribbon cable and still I get intermittent boot disk failures messages at
> boot up. Both drives show no problems at all when scanned.
>
> I am assuming that the motherboard IDE is knackered or could this be
> caused by something else? Wrong master slave designation, incorrect bios
> setting, drive connected via wrong cable connector (grey instead of
> black)?????
>
> Everything else seems fine and there are no problems when the machine has
> booted up.
>
> Any bofins out there who thow what's causing this?
>
> thanks,
>
> Pete

Ive had experience with a couple of these boards and both were a bit 'flaky'
when left on auto detect settings. Choose specific jumper settings on the
board and specific values in the Bios for CPU and RAM timings in particular.
Otherwise I found I would get regular error messages on bootup about a
variety of things.