Strange behaviour with software and BIOS

[Bluff]

Hello everyone

A few months ago I turned on my PC and found that it was being very erratic, locking up every other second. I restarted and it was fine, but I found my two optical drives in My Computer. I restarted again, and noticed that they did not show up in BIOS either...

When I shut down my computer and turned it back on the next morning, the same problem (locking up every other second). This time I opened Task Manager and noticed that there was a process, simply called "System" that kept opening every other second and stealing all my cpu cycles.

I restarted and lost my drives again.

The "System" process has not surfaced for a while now, but my optical drives remain lost. I have done various spyware and virus checks but nothing works.

Please help! I am running Win XP SP2 and have two IDE drives, one LG DVD RW and another CDRW.

[CCT]

Any error codes/alerts?

If not,

Check connections from the mobo to the drives.

Disconnect one drive try the other.

Repeat the other way around.

Try swapping drives to the alternate ends of the cable one at a time.

[Gary335]

Also, try a different IDE cable.