If you have a spot open on the other controller's ribbon
cable, move it there.

Check the disk controller settings in the BIOS and see what
a little fiddling with those will do for you.

Try another ribbon cable.

If you overclocked anything, back it off one notch.

If none of those work, you already know what to do next.

Done the BIOS.
Also have tried four firmware versions. (At least the LG stuff allows you to revert to older firmware iterations !)Cable is next, and LAST, I think.
At least the MB is from just at the end of an era so it actually has two IDE connectors... Those were the days !
Thing is, although there may have been the usual slight degradation in HDD performance as the optical and HDD are sharing a cable for now, it still all worked OK before.Me, overclock ? Only my heart and mind !Is that spelled 35€ ?
Oh, well... At least they'll be able to play with Light Scribe !

Right...

I've tried new cables... 80 & 40...
HDD and CD/DVD-ROM now on separate cables.

What I cannot understand is, if it's the drive itself that is faulty, WHY does it function perfectly when I boot from the Windows install CD ?

This tells me that the drive is OK and that it's got to be a Windows issue.
No ?

ALL 'drivers', Ha Ha Ha Ha, are OK... There actually is no other driver available other than the default/generic MS one.
None of the versions of firmware update make the least difference.

Anybody ?