StarDestroyer.Net BBS

Okay, in the last 2-3 weeks, I've had two primary hard drives go bad
on my Brother's Dell 8100. The First was the original IBM DeskStar
that came with it OEM, the second, which just happened tonight, was
a brand new Western Digital 80 GB only 1-2 weeks out of the box.

In both instances, my brother reported that the "system locked up and
when I rebooted, it wouldn't find the hard drives."

Now, in both cases, I've tested the POST; when the primary drive is
plugged in, the POST refuses to ID the other drives in the system,
but when I remove the primary drive, BING! POST recognizes the other
HDDs and CDROMS.

Now, do you think this could be because of the IDE chip on the mobo
going bad and issuing garbage, or power supply issues? A month or two
ago, my mother took our battery backup UPS from that computer because
she thought it wasn't needed, and because my dad was using it to spy on
her.

Anyway, that outlet is on the same circuit apparently as the dryer;
whenever the dryer/washer fires up, the light plugged into the same
outlet as the computer dims....should I totally replace the Mobo, or
should I simply find a UPS?

Personally I think you could just try a different outlet for the computer if a light goes all dim like that, but lets wait for a few more opinions.

I'd get a UPS and put it on a different circuit. If that dryer is drawing THAT much current, that can't be good for the computer's power supply let alone anything inside.

Questions:

Will it boot with the primary drive only?

Can you set it up so that the primary drive is the only one on the 1st IDE controller and move the other drives to the secondary controller?

And what Vertigo said. And get the UPS back!

possible solutions:

check the power supply in your box. It may have too low a wattage to handle the drive or may not be able to handle everything that's plugged into it. If it's the stock power supply that came with the machine i'd recommend upgrading to something capable of handling more watts.

check your BIOS and make sure it's up to date. BIOS conflicts with newer drives could be a bad thing, depending on the age of the motherboard.