I don't know if this belongs in a hardware forum or the XP forum but I've come across a pretty major issue with booting.

Sometimes at the initial bootup screen it will hang while trying to detect hard drives. (sometimes not even allowing me to entire BIOS)

Sometimes on the Windows XP loading screen the blue progress bar just loads forever.

Sometimes it finishes loading and it seems like Windows is going to start up but the screen stays black like the monitor is getting no signal.

Sometimes I can't even boot into safe mode.

Nothing seems consistent about the problem.

I think the issue may have originated by having my IPOD plugged into the USB port. This seems to have the known effect of literally destroying PC BIOS settings.

Sometimes when I DO get into Windows, one of my hard drives isn't visible.

I don't know what other diagnostic info to give here so if someone needs more, just ask. I'll be cruising these forums for awhile.

Hello and welcome to PC Help Forum.

Mmmm you seem to have a multitude of problems there?

So it is all random problems?

This could be an infection and there for I think you should do the "Prework" link in pink below.

Do you have the OS disk?A recovery may help but not sure as if this is an infection it needs sorting out.

Have you installed new software lately or some new hardware?

Could you also go to your user CP and fill in your computer specifications for me and check box show others.This could be helpfull in getting you a fix.

What operating system are you running?

As Jelly Bean said, you need to fill in your computer specs to help us to help you.
One tool to help you get the specifics of what is in your computer is the What's inside my PC? link in my signature.
It would also be a good idea to attach the Belarc report to your next reply.

In case you don't know how to attach documents, here is a How to for you...

First, click on the link...What's inside my PC?
After the scan is done, click on the IE Page at the top of your IE window then click on Save As...
You want to save the report in the .mht format.
Save the scan report to your desktop (that way it will be easier to find).

Now, attached the Belarc report to your next reply.

How do I attach a file? I'll tell you. (Us wizards always talk to ourselves.)

To attach files to a reply, look under the Message text window, you'll see a button that says Manage Attachments.
Click on the button. Now click on the browse button and browse to your desktop to select the previously saved file.

Hope this How to helps.

Ok. I updated my User Options with some information about my hardware.

And here is the Belarcs report.

Very good!

One thing the report shows is you have no virus protection. Bad...Bad...Very Bad.
Here is a free AVG antivirus program link for you...|MG| AVG AntiVirus Free Edition 8.0 Build 100
I recommend you download and install it and then update all the definitions ASAP (like now).

According to Belarc, your Motherboard is EVGA 122-CK-NF68 2.
Video should read NVIDIA GeForce 8800 Ultra.

The fact that you have no AntiVirus protection supports Jelly Bean's recommendation to do the Pre-Work.

We can't really fix any other problems you might have until we can be sure your computer is clean of bugs.

Both Jelly Bean and I have the Pre-Work link in our signatures. Please click on the link and follow the directions you find there.
Then, after your computer is healthy, we can address any other problems your computer might have.

Good Luck...

P.S. Sorry Jelly Bean if I've jumped into the deep end on you.
The devil made me do it.

I'll do that as soon as I can. (hopefully tomorrow morning)

In the meantime, I'd like to add a little more information to help with diagnosis:

1. I am booted into windows and everything is running fine atm except my F drive (the big boy)

2. I am getting little alerts in the system tray "Windows write error" or something similar to that. and it says something about an I/O error and not being able to write to the drive.

3. When I try to access media/files on the F drive, it just gives an error popup: F:\etc. is not accessible. The request could not be performed because of an I/O device error.

I don't know what could be causing this. My ideas are my PSU can't handle all the drives (it's a 700W though I would thinkt that would be plenty) or maybe the hard drive is busted. Or maybe it's a motherboard error.

The reason I don't just jump to the conclusion that the hard drive is busted.. is because of all the boot problems.. Why would my computer have trouble booting up if a tertiary media drive was busted. The boot drive seems to read/write fine (as well as my seconary 300 gigger)