OT: A tale of hard disk woes

[Pjotor]

This is my story:

I tried using the Serillel adapter on my hard drive. It didn't work, so I put the old ATA100 cable back.

Couldn't boot.

I (sigh) reinstalled Windows XP. It booted but very sluggishly so. Found out that DMA wasn't enabled for the drive (only PIO) and I couldn't enable it in Windows, because all boxes and combo lists were greyed out.

Did some reading on the BIOS. Enabled Bus Mastering in the BIOS, which in turn should enable DMA.

Rebooted. The hard drive wasn't recognized as a boot disk.

Prepared myself mentally for a serious hardware mutilation. Pulled all plugs from the drive. Looked at plug.

The coin fell down. ONE OF THE ATA PINS WAS PUSHED IN, probably when trying to force the cable in the slot the wrong way. "Damn", Pjotor thought to himself, "I have to buy me a new drive."

Pulled out a small pair of pliers . Managed to pull the faulty pin almost back to the original position. Would the solder points be undamaged? Would the drive spring back into life?

HELL, YEAH!

Conclusion: Computer errors are sometimes hardware related. The culprit is usually found between the chair and the keyboard.

Pjotor is now mentally healthy again. He has grown a sizeable set of smack marks in his forehead.