Thank you Jun,
I've had the same thing happen to my own machine and have become very
used to using the C:format command;  I too blame a buggy OS.
One question, did your "A" drive fail to respond during your troubles?
I've never had this happen before and am trying to avoid buying a new
motherboard.  First CD ROM access went; then I slave it and got it back;
immediately after, A-access went; Now I have neither, Device Mgr., shows
sec., IDE conflict; ----
oh well, I'm just waiting to hear from my friend with the same
motherboard and BIOS so we can reformat this HDD on his machine and use
test the faulty machine;
hope it's not the mobo!
thanks again,
Casey

Jun Qian wrote:
>
> I had similar problem before my win95 crashed (Just without the CD-ROM
> access problem).  It sounds like win95 system problem to me (not everbody
> else fault but bill gates')
> The best way to solve it is format C drive and do everything again.  (If you
> can make a cd-rom boot disk and get all s/w installation cd/disks and have
> data backup)
> If i can think anything else, I'll tell you.
>
> Good luck
>
> casey marion wrote:
>
> > Hi all, I was recently called to a friend's house to help them with a
> > problem they were having.  Their computer, P-100 on a VX AOpen board,
> > kept getting "Illegal Operation" codes followed by a really buggy
> > system.  Explorer.exe would not work, IE3 would not work, and the CD-ROM
> > would not access.
> > I opened the case and checked all the cables. CD-ROM on Sec., IDE, so I
> > slaved it to the Prim., IDE on the HDD.CD worked! But, then the A-drive
> > quit working??
> > Nothing I've tried would get the a-drive to work.  I tried three
> > different cable, and another "working" a-drive.  Rebooted, and the CD
> > isn't recognized by WIN95 (b) anymore!
> > Checked system device mgr., and the secondary IDE shows a conflict.
> > Removed and re-installed IDE HDD controllers.
> > And, still, no luck.  CD not recognized on sec., IDE/ A: will not read,
> > locks if try to access/ machine won't boot if CD slaved to Primary IDE
> > on HDD cable.
> > Afraid to reformat because I have no floppy access andno CD-ROM access.
> > Thoughts? it's a fairly new mobo [1 yr., old] and shouldn't be going
> > bad, but my next move might be a new mobo for them . . .
> > This problem originally started out as software related