My problem is twofold..

One: My PC won't recognise the hard disk when it's cold. At bootup it recognises everything on secondary IDE but nothing on primary. Is this a safety precaution or a symptom of malfunction?

Two: My CD burner only occasionally burns. It works fine in most other ways, occasionally giving me a CRC error when copying EXEs.

The burn LED only flashes when it is working and it never gives me coasters. My guess is it's software but this is just a guess.

Suggestions to replace the drive will not solve the problem. Reinstalling drivers didn't help, checking device manager settings were correct didn't help. Enabling IMAPI service in windows didn't help. Help!

CPU: AMD Athlon XP 2800+
Mobo: FICA AU31, Nforce2 chipset (MCP+APU)
PSU: 300W stock, runs everything fine.
GFX: ati radeon x1300xt, latest catalyst
Memory: 1gb & 512mb DDR dual channel
HDD: 80gb, swapfile 2.5gb
OS: XP SP3

I'll post a Hijackthis log or anything else you might need on request.

Hi

have you tried using another PSU, it may be voltage fluctuation .

I will try another PSU as soon as I can afford one from a reliable vendor. In the meantime I welcome any discussion as to why the problem occurs and how to compensate for it in the meantime.

Thanks for the input so far.