Strange Problem with Slave Drive / Mobo?

[XTREEEMMAK]

Ok,
Let me start from the beginning. About a year ago, I had purchased two 250 GB hard drives for my computer. With this old computer, (P4 2.4GHZ w/ 1.5gb RAM :ASUS P4VP-MX) I had spent allot of time just trying to get these hard drives working with each other; I mean it's not like it's the hardest thing either! Just set one to master and the other to slave and put it on the same IDE channel. However, it would seem that the second drive (slave) was having a bit of trouble going through its processes. Finally I got the system up satisfactory but I was aware that this problem could come back later considering that I would occasionally hear the drive stop and start again.

Today, I just added an AGP card to the computer that can run at 8x while the motherboard normally supports 4x. There's nothing wrong with this card (NVIDIA GEFORCE 5500) considering I was using it in another system I have. Never had a problem with it. However, Ever since I transferred the card to the older system, the computer began freezing or having severe CPU usage spikes which would cause the entire system to halt for about 5 seconds and resume its process. Forget loading anything either for it would always freeze then as well. So then I uninstalled the drivers for the card and tested that. Of course the system was running fine now, but after downloading and reinstalling the most current drivers for this card, it happened again! So I uninstalled and got back in the system. I was doing a few tests and then it froze while doing that! So I restarted. As soon as I did that, I heard one of the drives failing and starting again. Then a BIOS message came up saying that there was Drive error on the primary slave. Hit F1 to resume! Did that and I couldn't get into the os.

I couldn't believe it so I unplugged it to make sure that this was really the problem. When I did, the OS came back up. Suspecting it may be the same problem from earlier this year, I put the slave drive on the second IDE channel and tried it. Nothing happened. Unplugged it, worked again. Changed the slave drive to cable select and it got past the BIOS but wouldn't boot to the os. So then frustrated I thought that the drive may have really gone bad. However I had an idea to take that drive out and put it in another system just to be sure it was the drive. So I did. Strange enough, the drive was recognized, got past the BIOS and the operating system came up with no hassle! Before I put the drive into the new system, I changed the drive back to slave and put it on the already existing open primary IDE slave channel of that new system. Regardless of the video card situation, there shouldn't have been a hard disk failure notice. So my only guess is that it has to be the motherboard. With that said, I ordered another motherboard.

The question I have is why exactly did this happen and will getting another mobo fix my problem? I'm really in a desperate situation here by the way.

BTW,
I’m just getting a substitute motherboard for now. I’m not trying to splurge on something too high-end till I get the money.

[tempus]

What are your system specs? It could be the power supply that is too small or is failing.

[glc]

You should be using 80 wire cable and cable select jumpering on all drives, not master/slave jumpering. However, I vote for a power supply issue.