Sounds like a problem I have generated a lot lately during testing a new MB.
I "think" you may have somehow "lost" your busmaster drivers for your IDE
controller channels.  I would investigate any drivers your mother board manufacturer
gave you on their install CD-ROM, or more importantly the newer ones that have
come out since then. (Mine have been "revised" two or three times in the last
three months.)  My drivers use a setup program from inside a working WinX
GUI  "session".  WHY you lost them is another matter. I am on the "bleeding
edge" of data corruption, and have had "that problem" too.  If I were you,
I'd get all my data safe, and wait for the other list members to reply also.
              Rick

> when restarted, i found that neither CD-DRIVES were recognized by win98 and,
> more importantly, in my DEVICE MANAGER I now have yellow exclamation points
> next to my PRIMARY IDE CONTROLLER (DUAL FIFO) and my SECONDARY IDE CONTROLLER
> (DUAL FIFO).  They claim that "the device is not present, not working
> properly, or does not have all drivers installed".  I tried to UPDATE DRIVER,
> but as always, what windows help suggests never works (the driver it wanted
> to update was the same one active).  Furthermore, my system still RUNS in
> normal more but ALL of my hard drives are running in MS-DOS compatibilty mode
> file system and things are lagging.  Is this a fluke hardware failure?

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