XP freezes on boot



At the windows splash screen with the progress indicator. I have a Dell
Dimension 8400, P4 3.2 GHz, 800 MHz FSB, 2X160GB SATA HD's, 1 GB RAM, Samsung
DVD-ROM, Philips DVD+/-RW.

If I disconnect BOTH optical drives, the machine will boot fine. If I
connect one or both optical drives, the machine freezes on normal boot but
will boot in safe mode. I have tested this with cd-rom and cd-rw drivew with
the same result.

I have been dealing with Dell for 3 weeks about this issue. They sent out a
"tech" Friday and replaced the HD's with the same result as everything else.
The had me reformat the HD and reinstall the OS again to no avail.

In looking at the Device Manager in Safe Mode, under IDE ATA/ATAPI
controllers, Intel Bus Master IDE Controller is not listed, only the
following are listed:
Intel(R) 82801FB/FBM Ultra ATA Storage Controllers - 266F
Intel(R) 82801FR SATA AHCI Controller
Primary IDE Channel

I'm wondering if something is screwed up with my IDE controllers but am at a
dead end. Any help is GREATLY appreciated!
.



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