Xp not recognizing WD sata drive

[neveryonas]

Hi,

I have a western digital sata (ata) 160 gb drive connected to channel 3 on my pc, as well as two other drives,
Was working great until yesterday, got the blue screen of death and some sort of memory dump (can't remember the exact message), can boot off my other drive that is set to master secondary, but Xp does not show the sata drive at all. I even ran a Bart boot up disk, and doesn't detect it. THe bios sees it, but when I press esc for boot menu, it is not in the list.
Any ideas? Should I disconnect the drive and reconnect it?
Cheers?

[david eaton]

Should I disconnect the drive and reconnect it?
Yes, SATA cables are known for failing to stay in place. Check both ends of the cable, as it could equallyme the motherboard plug that is loose. Don't do this with the computer powered up! some SATA can stand being hot plugged, but if you don't know if yours is of the type, then turn it off first!

[neveryona]

I think I have a much bigger problem now, I checked the cable, and yes, it was loose, Ireinstalled windows and it was just fine, until I rebooted, on reboot, you get a flash of a blue screen, which I believe is the dumping of physical memory error again, and then it just reboots. The screen just flashed up quickly so I can't quite see it.

I tried a different drive, installed windows, and the exact same thing! Installs fine, just get going and then on reboot does the same thing.

Now there is a nvidia driver and geoforce video card. Could this have something to do with?

Please help, going crazy...

[mjc]

Can you get into Safe Mode?

[neveryona]

, can't even get into safe mode, goes to that screen, but on load just restarts, before flashing blue screen.
I tried connecting cable to onboard video, but can't see anything on screen
Must be disabled in bios, but can't see where to change,
and have restored bios to default. Should I try removing the video card?

[Paul Komski]

If this SATA is not involved with running the OS then detach it and change the setting (http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx/kb/174630) so that the BSOD doesnt automatically reboot the machine and lets you look at and read its output.

BSODs can be caused by so many things, both hardware and software, that they can be difficult enough to pin down.

Check your memory and the SATA with diagnostic utilities run from floppies or CDs could be worth a go.