LS-120 lockup problem

I'm running Se440bx with PIII 500 and 256ram. I have LS-120 as primary slave and CD and CDRW as secondary IDE. The unit will work one time than will lock up the machine. If I eject the disk from the drive the computer will go back to work. If I try to restart the machine will lock at boot. If I disconnect the ribbon and the power from the 120 drive the unit will operate as if nothing is wrong. This setup has been working for about 6 months now this problem. I have the same setup running the same MB but with PIII 700. Any ideas? Jumpers on the 120 are slave and the HDD master.

 

so you have the same exact setup but with a PIII 700 and it works fine?

 

Hi. Yes, the system works fine. I'm running Me by the way. When the system locks, the HDD light stays on until I eject the disk. Then a box will pop up and ask me to insert a disk into drive B. I close the box and the computer works like nothing's wrong. If I try to restart, the unit will lock at post. I then disconnect the ribbon cable and the power supply and the unit boots right up. No B drive of course. If I reconnect the drive and start the unit the next day, everything will work (B drive as well) until I try to access the drive a second time. Then it all begins again. I have plug & play turned off in the BIOS. I tried to use it but there was no change. I even switched the 120 drives and that didn't fix the problem. It seems that when I removed the ribbon cable (I switched it as well) and reattached it, the unit would boot but lock when I try to access the drive. I can't believe it's a configuration problem.

 

I just ran across this site looking to solve a problem a lot like yours. If you already fixed your problem please let me know what you did.

http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/Q151/9/11.asp

 

After reading through some of the posts, I decided to check the jumpers on the HDD. I have a Seagate which says to add a jumper to the drive when using it with a non-ATA compliant slave. I have a slave jumper on the 120 drive. It's working so far and instead of listing the drive as "B" it moved it down to "E". I'm going to see how it works over the weekend and when it gets heavily used on Monday. I'm still confused as to why this development arose since the machine has been working for over six months. My machine with the PIII coppermine and the same MB with the same ram is still functioning with the 120 drive listed as "B". Maybe it has something to do with the CPU? At least it's working for now. It's amasing to me how identical parts and software can act so differently.