[XP] Pc Forgets Detected Drives

Hi Again

Strange one this - well I think so

Friend swapped out CD RW from an old PC into existing PC due to failure of existing drive. May be unrelated but since then PC comes back saying something like no drives detected and wont boot. Or no drive connected press F1 to continue.
Doesn't do it all the time. Tried swapping hdd into same model of PC thinking it was Mobo problem - maybe drive controller. It was OK at first now doing same thing again. If you go into bios and select Auto dectect drives also seems to fix the problem.
It has also come up sayin imminent drive failure back up etc.
Could the CD RW cause this or is it a failing Hard drive - would that effect the bios not detecting any of the drives?

As always all and any help greatly appreciated.

TP

Try disconnecting that optical drive altogether and see if that makes any difference. If it doesn't, try changing the IDE cable.

Had a look at the PC today and loaded the optimised defaults in the bios which seems to have fixed the press F1 error mesage.
Restarted PC succesfully several times so seems to have fixed it.
Would loading optimised defaults turn off S.M.A.R.T which was mentioned in the F1 error message?

It might. It wouldn't hurt to check and turn S.M.A.R.T. back on again if it was turned off.