Here it is My neighbours computer is wierding out. Ive tried evrything I can think of to fix it. Every time I boot it I have to go to the setup and autodetect the hd works fine until I turn the computer off and reboot it and then the same thing. If I just restart it from windows it works fine. I even tried replacing the battery and I check the cmos jumper and its fine. On the cold boot it finds the cd drive and floppy but not the hd. Any suggestions?

Is this HDD a new one? or this problem suddenly occured to an exisiting HDD?
Looks like BIOS does not properly support the HDD. Upgrading the BIOS might be a possible solution. My cousin also got the same problem and a BIOS upgrade solved the problem.

Nope I believe its a western digital. 20 gig hd. It had been working fine up until recently also an ecs p4 mainboard with a 1.7 gig celeron.

Did the problem happen after installing a new OS or did it just start happening without any system repairs done prior to?

Just started happening out of the blue. Im thinking of switching boards and see where it gets me. I also have another smaller hd Im going to try first and see if it solves it .

Try another PSU and see if that fixes the problem. I had a similar problem and the PSU was the farthest thing from my mind till I replaced it. All worked well after that. I had the same boot problem, and got worse and worse.

Sounds like the drive is going down :( I had the same happen last week on the computer i'm typing from. I went so far as to change the motherboard before i realised, i could have kicked myself.

Yep, DoG is right. It's a bad hard drive. I have a Maxtor 40 gig, that does the exact same thing. But, if I leave the computer running for about 3 minutes, at the boot screen, and then hit the reset button it works. You can actually hear the hard drive start up, WAYYY after the computer has.

The cause for mine to start acting up was because I smacked it a couple of times...it was making noises, and I wanted them to stop. And guess what! They did! :D

Thanks guys. Ill try another drive before I switch boards. Neighbor is gonna owe me big time after all this. I figured if I couldnt get an answer at b1 I couldnt get one anywhere. Lol!

Problem solved installed a new drive and it works perfect . I can also use the old drive as a second hard drive. Thanks