Errors in Event Viewer in XP

[Bobdog]

There are a whole series of errors that appear in the Event Viewer log (nice feature!) when I boot up XP. I occassionally blue screen on start up which after a safemode boot seems to resolve itself. The errors appear whether it hangs or not.

Typically there are several:
Souce: Disk
The driver detected a controller error on \Device\Harddisk0\D.

and a ...

Source: ATAPI
A parity error was detected on \Device\Ide\IdePort0.

anybody any ideas what the problem is??

It may be that I havent put any motherboard related software drivers on after the install of XP but thats just a long shot - Im using an ABIT SE6 with an Intel PIII 800EB. From the errors it looks like a hard drive problem though.

[Terrorbyte]

seems that your IDE cable has either the drives in the wrong position on the cable, or the CDROM is not compatible with the operating system or the HDD.

Check all IDE cables, and jumpers on each drive (master, slave, cable select)
Try putting the HDD on its own on IDE 0 and make sure it is connected to the end of the cable.
Connect the CDROM on IDE 1 and same same with the cable and jumpers.

If you have the CDROM as a slave to the HDD (which is quite normal) make sure the cable had the master-HDD on the end and the slave-CDROM in the middle connector, and check the jumpers on the drives are set to HDD-master and CDROM-slave.
Open up the bios and make sure the correct drive is showing in it's right place, IE; CDROM as slave to the HDD on IDE 0 or if you want the CD can be a master on IDE 1
Note; in computer english 0 = 1, I know that's a bit irish but thats how it is, the zeros have a value.

[Bobdog]

I'll give that a try when I get back to my machine tonight - thanks. I have two hard drives and a CD/RW feeding off my IDE cables but cant remember what config.

As an afterthought my main hard drive is partitioned into two (C: and D: )and I reformatted C: with NTFS format when loading XP while D: is still FAT32 (I havent enough space to move the data off D: while I reformat it yet). Could this multiple format on one drive be causing the errors. Its just that the first error message does refer to ...Harddisk0\D ?

Final thought (promise!) - My main hard drive is ATA while my old one is EIDE. They are both on the same IDE cable and Im using the old cable rather than the new ATA one. Will this have confused the XP installation?

<My message thread is drifting - should I put this on the hardware forum instead?>

[Terrorbyte]

With the different HDD's I do know that the system will run at the speed of the slowest when on the same IDE.
The multiple formats certainly confused me, will have to pass on that one.
So the list is two hard drives and one burner ? if that is correct try your main drive on IDE 0 and run the burner as slave to the second HDD on IDE 1.

Personally I never partition drives in any way, if you can it may be better to start from a clean drive and do a new install, that will generally fix a lot of problems.
Xp seems to behave better when installed from a new/clean drive, there may be other ways to remove the partition but I dont use them so I can't advise that.

what are the disk sizes, and speeds ?

[Bobdog]

Just to close this one out thanks Terrorbyte for your advice.

It appears that my Master was in the middle of the IDE cable and the Slave at the end. Reversing them actually didnt help (I guess the two werent compatable in Master Slave relationship - strange as both were Quantum Fireballs though one was ATA100).

Moving the faster drive to its own IDE cable (and also now using the 80 core ribbon :-) ) and moving the second drive as a slave to my CD/RW on the other IDE channel means all is now happy. No more IDE or ATAPI errors in the event log!.

I do get some other miscellaneous errors in the event log (time outs in certain processes) but theyre not causing any problems so if they do Ill post a fresh thread

Cheers !!