Unfortunately this hasn't worked either.

I did try buying a new IDE cable to double check your first suggestion but no luck.

I've checked to make sure the disk drive is set to slave, and have even tried connecting the disk drive and hard drive on the same IDE cable to the Primary IDE channel, all to no avail.

I have seen some referances on other threads to "Firmware". As a novice I don't know what this is. Can you enlighten me and might it help?

Kind Regards

wilo