Dell's disk monitoring system .. EIDE error

Hi All,

Some friends asked me to 'sort out' their Dimension 4300 that was running slow and had many 'issues'.

Apparently, their brother in law had fitted a new HDD a while ago when the following message started to appear then the PC wouldn't boot one day (possibly for non drive failure reasons) ...

"Dell's disk monitoring system has detected that drive 0 on the primary EIDE controller is operating outside of normal specifications. It is advisable to immediately back up your data and replace your hard disk drive by calling your support desk or Dell Computer Corporation."

.. but it didn't stop the message appearing so he left the old HDD in there as well as it formatted and tested ok? I finally got involved as the box was running slowly and the copy of XP the BIL had put on (because they couldn't find the Dell copy) had finally died.

I first experimented with the old (80G) and new (60G) drives fitted singly (Master No slave), both drives were detected ok but neither improvement (but worth a go).

I left the original drive in there, re-installed XP and everything seemed fine, *except* having to F1 past the error message every time. ;-(

My last thought was to try a *different* drive in there (different make model) but my gut feeling is there is something else? Like Dell drives being 'different' but I'm sure I've fitted 'std' drives in the past with no issues?

Anyone know if this is a 'common' fault with a circa 91 Dimension 4300 and if so is there a cure workaround (apart from a new machine that is) please ;-)

The machine is still fine for their (pretty basic) needs ..

All the best ..

T i m