Well it's telling you that the hard drive isn't connected with an "ultra" IDE cable but it's strange it should just start saying that out the blue.
Take off one side to examine the IDE cable that is being used.
The "ultra" cable has the same amount of pins in the connector but with twice as many wires in the cable (each second wire acting as a shield for the carrier wire next to it) distiguised by it's much finer wires.
These ultra cables are for ATA66 and above hard drives.
                                                Martin

Replying helps further our knowledge, without comment leaves us wondering.

I want your BIOS.

Heck with a bios reporting this much detail we can close this forum.

If you never saw that message previously, there is something wrong with the physical connection between your motherboard and the hard disk drive.

paparazi (Martin) above has excellent advice.  Let me shorthand it for you:

. As a new install, this would mean you have the wrong cable
. As a new error message on a previously working machine, remove the cable on both sides, and carefully reinsert the cable.
. You might need a new cable if it has been bent, pinched or in any way abused.

Thanks for the question (and replies). I have the same problem. Just bought a new machine which I have to put together from scratch. I've got 2 CD drives (CD-ROM, CD-RW) and 2 hard drives. Everything went fine until I booted the first time. I've tried recabling but the problem just moved. I guess I'll go out and buy a bew cable. One question: if I have 1 ATA-166 cable, do I nee both to be the same?

Thx
Ray
p.s. I'll let you know the BIOS maker next time I power it up.

You should have the 80-conductor ATA cable on the Primary channel, and only need one for the Secondary channel if you place a hard drive there as well (assuming it's ATA 66 or faster).  The CDROM drives should not require an 80 conductor cable.

~cdogg
    "All paid jobs absorb and degrade the mind";
        - Aristotle
    For general rules and guidelines to get better answers, click here:  FAQ219-2884

I'm desperating looking for help on this subject also...
Brief history... I've had this computer for awhile. All of a sudden I started getting this error 'Primary IDE channel no 80 conductor cable installed'. Then it would continue the process and after the recognition of the processor it gives a Disk Failure error and to enter a system disk. It boots complete rarely but mostly not.
Things I've tried:
- took the computer to work to test and NO problems. Rebooted over 2 dozen times with no problem.
- bought a new conductor cable... same error.
- bought a new HD... same error.
- used the new cable that came with the HD... same error.

I've been able to get it to boot a couple of times so I can try and do an install of XP but I can't get to the point to finish the install.

I'm so confused and don't know what to try... I'm looking for help from anywhere at this point....

Thanks in advance....

Connie

Something is not adding up here. If it booted over two dozen times at work, then I would look at the differences between the work and home environments before changing anything on the inside of the system. Did you use the same mouse, keyboard, monitor at home and work? Any peripherals plugged into the system at home that weren't at work, or vice-versa? Granted that attached peripherals shouldn't cause this kind of error, but how else to explain the two dozen boots at work?

What other devices are installed inside this PC? What are the specs of the PC, such as motherboard make and model, CPU type and speed, memory type and amount?

i was getting this problem.  if i remember correctly i had the cable hooked up round the wrong way or something like that.  i'm sure it was a cable fault though.  also check your jumper settings.  these can cause problems.  I do know that my episode of this problem stopped when I changed the ide cable and ensured all connections were secure.

Freestone...

Thanks for your advice. I had hooked up a A/B switch probably about a month or so before I started having this problem. I hooked it all back up straight and and IT'S WORKING!!!!  :)  (knock on wood)...

Thanks so much for opening my eyes and saying...Duh!!!!  

It just makes me realize that even though I'm in the IS field, I hate computers sometimes... Their so upredictable. It makes no sense to me how and A/B switch can give an IDE error...

Oh well.. Thanks for all your help.. I trully appreciate it...

Connie.

You are very welcome, Connie. I'm glad that you were able to solve the problem. A co-worker of mine is convinced "all computers are evil", but I happen to think they are a bit more benign than that, each being possessed by their own unique gremlin.

Dell

Open the pod bay doors, HAL.
I'm sorry, Dave. I'm afraid I can't do that.

I have replaced my msi mother board to support a 2.8ghz processor.  I recently redid the system with a new western digital hard drive.  What happened was this:  The system would not recognize the hard drive, and the hard drive got hot.  I was able to copy files to the HD, but would not install.  I replaced the HD and now I am getting this message on boot up: primary ide channel no 80 conductor cable installed.  I have tried several boot options, even replaced the cables to the motherboard, but I am still getting the same message.  Last night, I was able to get XP installed on it, but the computer froze and gave me another blue screen of death:  io error.  so, since then I have been trying to reconfigure the whole thing, but with no luck!  It keeps freezing on one file and will not copy to the HD and I still have, primary ide channel no 80 conductor cable installed.  Could you guys help out?

Same problem here. I have a system with a Pentium III 800 Mhz processor, Intel 815 Solano chipset MB, with 2 HDDs on one IDE (the secondary one if I remember correctly), a DVD-ROM drive and a CD-RW drive on the other IDE. My OS is Win 2k
All of a sudden I got the message "secondary IDE channel no 80 conductor cable installed" and the system doesn't recognize the DVD or CD RW drives. Changed the IDE cable with a new one and now I get both "Primary IDE channel...." and "Secondary IDE channel...." messages on startup. The system boots, the HDDs work fine and the optical drives are not recognized.
Could it be a problem with my MB? Some short-circuit somewhere? Because another thing that happened before and it happens more often now is that the system re-boots by itself sometimes, while I work.
Other problems were with my sound-card. the on-board soundcard showed some very odd behaviour; a lot of times was running like at double speed, any sound my comp was making was heard at this very high-speed and it needed like 2-3 re-boots to get back to normal. I finally bought a PCI soundcard and everything was fine until I installed it's driver from the CD. After I installed the driver, couldn't use the CD-RW drive and then got this message with the IDE cable.
The conclusion is probably to get another MB, but.... isn't there an easier way to solve this problem?

It does sound like a bad mobo, probably as you said either a short somewhere or a damaged capacitor.

Are you positive that you are using an 80-wire cable?  The difference in density of the wires is pretty clear when you hold it up next a 40-wire one.

If so, then yep it's probably time to upgrade.  You could make a $30 purchase and buy a Promise or Highpoint PCI IDE card.  It'll give you one or two extra IDE channels to bypass the IDE controllers on the motherboard.  It's not an efficient solution for both hard drives, however, since the PCI bus is limited to a total of 133MB/s.  

Not sure what else there is worth trying besides starting from ground up and building a new one...

~cdogg
    "All paid jobs absorb and degrade the mind";
        - Aristotle
    For general rules and guidelines to get better answers, click here:  FAQ219-2884