>Now, when the system boots up, I get an error message that states,
>"Secondary Master Hard Disk Failure".
>
>Here's the twist, if I do a soft boot (hit the reset button) everything
>is normal. I can access the drive, work from it, transfer to and from
>the drive and in fact, this is where my swap file is located.I suspect a
>glitch in the BIOS chip, a defect if you will. I have recorded a hard
>copy to make sure the settings were or are the same as when the system
>was first built.


It sounds to me that your BIOS battery has gone dead, and therefore when
the power is cut from the system, the BIOS setting revert back to your
original setting, and therefore things don't work right.  The battery on
most motherboards is replaceable, you just have to find it.
Matthew Ballard
Computer Consultant

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