Bios looses Hard drive

[Don Carden]

while working in XP the system locks up and I have to do
a reboot. If I hit the reset button, during post there
is no hard drive detected, however if I do power off the
hard drive is detected. It seem that the reason for
lockup is XP can't find the hard drive. Using Western
Digital Drive Fitness Test there is never a problem, and
the drive checks out OK. I have let the computer run the
fitness test for much long than it takes for XP to hang
up and there is never a problem. When I first installed
XP there was never a problem, it occured after installing
updates. Anyone else having this problem? Suggestions
wanted.
Regards
Don Carden

[D.Currie]

"Don Carden" > wrote in message
...
> while working in XP the system locks up and I have to do
> a reboot. If I hit the reset button, during post there
> is no hard drive detected, however if I do power off the
> hard drive is detected. It seem that the reason for
> lockup is XP can't find the hard drive. Using Western
> Digital Drive Fitness Test there is never a problem, and
> the drive checks out OK. I have let the computer run the
> fitness test for much long than it takes for XP to hang
> up and there is never a problem. When I first installed
> XP there was never a problem, it occured after installing
> updates. Anyone else having this problem? Suggestions
> wanted.
> Regards
> Don Carden

If the bios doesn't see the drive, it's not a windows problem, it's a
hardware problem. Windows is probably locking up because it suddenly can't
find the hard drive. If the hard drive checks out okay, the next suspects
would be the ide cable, the power supply, the motherboard, or the memory. It
still could be the hard drive, but it's a random glitch, and if it's not
glitching the diagnostics don't catch it.