The message 200510131030.08097.matt@mpcontracting.co.uk from Matt Parker matt@mpcontracting.co.uk contains these words:
Can you set all the IDE devices to "cable select"? I don't normally do this myself in normal running, but it would let the devices sort out amongst themselves how they'd like to operate - a useful debugging step I think.
Do you mean make-up another cable, or just use ordinary IDE unmodified cables and set the devices to cable-select?
If it rearranges things to its satisfaction, it might reallocate C: and not want to boot...