Angelico I will look into the j-micron controller when I get home. I was told in another forum that the j-micron controller is needed for the IDE drives; if this is true I won't be able to use the IDE HD and the DVD burner correct?

Funny that you mention it might be a software error, I was thinking of that just recently. I had at some point altered the registry to fix a read-only folder problem http://support.microsoft.com/kb/256614
I have since then returned the registry back to its original state and the problem still persists.