> > no PATA drives, just SATA-II, it worked before, but stopped to, I > > thought it was damaged but surface scan was OK, I reinstalled, but the > > problem persists..... it well may be also caused by the fact that I, > > in the meantime, used that box with linux IDE discs, so I fiddled with > > BIOS, sorrrrry...
This sounds exactly like the trouble I initially had on my AMD machine. It turned out there is a bios bug and it is highly sensitive to how the SATA is configured, and whether in ACHI or native IDE mode. I also found it necessary to remove power to clear nvram or memory or something which seemed to maintain state unless power was removed.
