Greetings fellow compatriots!

I'm officially stumped in my conundrum. I have a machine with these specifications:

Motherboard: P5GD1-VM
Processor: Intel E6600 (2.4GHZ)
RAM: 4 Sticks of Corsair XMS2 1GB DDR2 SDRam
Video Card: EVGA 640-P2-N821-AR GeForce 8800GTS 640MB 320-bit GDDR3 PCI Express x16 HDCP
Power Supply: 750mw Antec (Don't remember exact model)

Hard Drive I've mainly been working with: Western Digital Caviar SE16 WD3200AAKS 320GB

Here's my problem:

Randomly, out of the blue when booting this machine, Windows would get to the normal screen with the loading bar, and bam - Blue Screen of death with a 0x00000024 error, which looks like it's an NTFS error.

Alright, so I try putting in my Windows XP Home Edition disc so I can try doing a repair, except when it loads up I get this message:

"Setup did not find any hard disk drives installed in your computer.

Make sure any hard drisk drives are powered on and properly connected to your computer, and that any disk-related hardware configuration is correct. This may involve running a manufacturer-supplied diagnostic or setup program.

Setup cannot continue. To quit Setup, press F3."

Oooookay. So I take the hard-drive out, change the IDE cable to a brand new one, reconnect the power connection and boot again.

Blue screen again, except I get this error code: 0x00000007b, which is for "Inaccessible boot device."

At this point, as you can imagine, I am thinking my drive has died.

I take it out, try it in another computer, exact same specifications and BAM. Loads up perfectly. Out of curiousity, I take the hard-drive from the second computer and place it in the first. Exact same errors, but when it's placed back into the second computer, it boots up, no problem. I even tried it on the other IDE channel to no avail.

The BIOS recognizes the hard-drives so I don't think it's a BIOS issue. My only thought at this point is that the motherboard is BUST.

Any ideas?

Ya your mobo could be "Bust" but it could also be a bios issue. I know, you said your bios recognizes the drives, but try flashing it. If that doesn't help try switching out components (eg. ram, psu) and if that doesn't work, I'd RMA the board. Hope I could be some help. Good luck!!!

Please check which IDE slot di you use? there is two IDE slots on the board. one is blue, another is black which is controlled by the third party controller. please make sure the IDE HDD is plugged into the blue slot.

Thanks for the advice! I will try the BIOS update and let you know how it goes.

As for the IDE slot, I've tried both and get the same results both times. That was one of my original ideas.