Hard Drive boot error

[LeighMA]

I have had quite some pain with my current hard drive. I've had it replaced twice and in for repairs twice more, and currently the problem is that when I turn my PC on it comes up "primary slave error" (or something like that)... then I reset the PC and it works fine. What can I do??

[Isos]

Have you replaced the harddrive ribbon cable?

[kwai]

sounds like a hardware prob since it works fine once the system had a chance to "warm up" a bit. did you double check all the connectors and make sure they're in all the way. one of my ide cables likes to loosen up every time i go into the case.

[LeighMA]

I've replaced the ribbon & power cables, and also attempted to puit in a new controller card (but it wouldn't work because my mobo can't disable the built-in controller). Any other suggestions?

I was thinking it may be due to spin up time.. but I have nothing about that in my BIOS (one of my old boards you could set to delay 5-10 seconds to ensure a drive had spun up first). Help!

Oh, and just 15 minutes ago, I turned this damned thing on and it worked first go (first time in months!)

[WRSauber]

Check your cmos battery and battery connectors.

[purplehippo]

"primary slave error" denotes that the BIOS has been told to see a device but does not. Enter your bios and make sure that no device is entered or is diabled.

[Bleeding Edge]

If you only have this one drive, check that the jumpers are set as Master on the drive itself.
Make sure the cable is attached to the Primary IDE connector on the motherboard and the drive is attached to the cable end.
Power the system up and enter the system BIOS (during POST, there is a line stating "press the delete 'key' to enter setup" or something similar.)
In the BIOS setup, choose Auto Configure for the Primary Master drive.
Choose None for Primary Slave.
Choose none for Secondary Master and Slave or Disable the Secondary IDE controller.
If you have an IDE CD-ROM connected, make sure the jumpers on that is on Slave or CSEL (cable select)and attached as the Primary Slave or attach it as the Secondary Master and set the BIOS accordingly in all instances.