Hard drive only resgisters as a SLAVE

Maybe try cable select instead of slave or master, and make sure it's the last drive on the cable (from the sounds of it ATA, and not SATA?).

Scott,
Thanks for the response but as I mention in my intial write up. The default jumper setting was for auto select e.g. cable select. My next plan is to try and read the drive was another computer and to use a different hardrive. Somehow the system is seeing the drive because I don't get a unrecognizable media failure and it gets to a Windows scripting the allows you to attempt to go to "Safe Mode", previous known profile, etc...any attempt to select any of those options results in the same response of you let the script time out, system reboots and returns to the same page....loop, loop, loop.

Ah, sorry... maybe I skimmed past the part where you mentioned auto as I've always known it as cable select instead. Do they get detected correctly when connecting individually?

Don't know if that would be an issue with the IDE port on the mobo, or a failing controller on one of the disks, but maybe other hardware would help narrow it down then. Best of luck.

Aside from trying the drive in another computer... Try another IDE ribbon cable. Have seen weird stuff from bad ribbon cables.

Please note in my original response last sentence I already noted that I had replaced the drive cable.

Scott: I've run a couple more test. Took drive out and read the drive with a USB to IDE cable...copied data off drive. Installed a Western Digital drive on the original cable...System auto detected as Master. This tells me it is something with the Seagate drive. Found something via Google today about using a seagate drive utility. Haven't had a chance to try it yet...That'll be my next test...If that doesn't work...I'll try reformatting.

hope hard drive and cd rom are not connected through single data bus, is it so? if it is then change the connections. to what female bus connector hd disk is connected, connect the cd rom and vice versa.

if cdrom and hd disk are connected through single bus, swap the connections for cdrom and hd disk.