Check For Hardware Conflicts...
Theres No Enduser Options Unless Your Running An NT Core (2000, XP or 2003 Or XP 64-Bit) To Look Directly and See if somethign isnt Working right...
try updating drivers for IDE devices etc etc...
Take Out Every thing But the Video Card and the CD-ROM..
Disable the Sound Device in teh Bios if its onboard, take out any Net work Cards or Modems.. Boot Up with Just the Harddisks and CD-ROM, The Less Hardware the Better,
If It works After That... Start Adding Stuff Back One By One.. Until the Problem Re-occurs.. then you'll know what the prob is..
Sounds Like an IDE MIni Port Driver is Poofted or something..
my system is wierd too..
It wont run correctly unless i have the "Via Latency Patch" installed and the "Compaq Special Purpose SBLive!" Drivers.. If ONe Or Both arent Installed I Get Lock ups and Random reboots..
Also..
If You Can RUN WITH "ACPI" Disabled, Which WOuld Require You To Turn It off in the Bios then Re-Install Windows.. Unless you know how to do it manually, which microsoft says not to do but i did it with no problems on 2 systems back in 2001, and they are fine... though i dont remember the exact procedure, it can be foun on the net,
Personally ACPI = Unstable System, Regardless of Windows.. Windows M.E. Was installed for 20 Minutes on my system then I Wiped it out...
If Your Running ACPI Winows Throws Everything oN the Same IRQ...
Lemme KNow If Running In A "bare Bones" Situatiuon Helps..
Also, When You Run It With Just the Video Card HDD and CD_ROm, Uninstall those Before you reboot Via Device Manager, that way it re-freshes the drivers... and loads them in teh optimal settings (irq dma etc etc..) also make sure DMA is enabled...