On Tue, 05 Dec 2017 01:53:59 -0500, Paul
wrote:

John B. Smith wrote:

I have a final weirdness to report on this problem. Today my XP
stumbled on the boot-up. Said it was trying boot the CD. On my next
try it really booted SLOOOOW, into XP. So I went immediately to HD
Tune and checked the disk xfer speeds. This time it was my 500g boot
drive that was running in PIO mode. Turned off, pulled my AC cable,
and installed a new black round latching SATA 6 cable. I bought a 12"
length not realizing the originals were 18". However it was long
enough to reach the hard drives, a little short for the DVDs though. I
booted, intending to do Paul's trick of deinstalling the driver as i
did above for the 1000g drive. However the boot proceeded sprightly
and when I cked HD Tune the 500g was out of PIO mode and running
UltraDMA5 again. I had thought once a drive got stuck in PIO you were
going to have to do Paul's trick to get it back out.
I wonder if pulling the power cable forcing the BIOS to start from
scratch has anything to do with it?

Did you change the port it was plugged into ?

Did the OS mention "hey, how about rebooting now as
I have just discovered new hardware" ?

Those are signs you achieved the same result when
Windows scanned for new hardware.

Paul
No, same SATA port.
I don't remember anything like that and I don't see it in my notes. I
THINK I would have noted something like that. I can't remember if I
watched my slowish XP boot all the way to the end though. I think I
did, to see if my new cable would give trouble.

I seem to remember that Windows does sneaky behind-the-scenes things
on the boot to repair itself if it thinks it needs to. I don't use
Restore Points.