NJG252

Hello and Thank you for rapid (really rapid) reply !!
I'm gonna be up all night on this.

All the drives are ATA - but the smaller one is Parallel ATA and the large is simple ATA.
Maxtor 6E040L0 and a Maxtor 6Y120L0 are the ID's of the drives I'm dealing with. If that helps you piece it all together (reference & research).
No SATA's on this machine. No RAID.
UltraATA100 cables, do factor here. I had to check that, and in all the seagate.com stuff it says it made a slight difference.
UDMA enabled, as matter of fact, I found it orig. set at MAX UDMA in bios.

Because your MB.bios is not seeing the drive it defaults to booting of a network (thats the MAC address boot stuff).
Ok....further detail. Please. Far as I know, she has a home router box and this is the only computer. I have a network, but not the type the banks, hospitals use for their network - server + lots of network computers. I have two wired stations with their independent systems, and two wireless the kids' use up on the second floor. I can boot all or one from my machine which is the network hub.....but it took me a long time to get that all set up. It wasn't pretty at times. lol
That error did surprise me. I hadn't even touched anything that would indicate network boot. it had gone smoothly last week, recognized, ran, booted, took the clone of the 40 & booted, all that. Until third day they had it at their house.

The other curious thing, Compaq has seven Bios flashes available, I found the system ROM setting, and when I asked live chat about a recommendation - they blanked. I so think it's partly a bios problem. Nice that live chat is so well trained, huh?

Also, please explain further, if poss. how slowing it down is going to get me headed in the right direction for install, in the end.?
Jumper settings are clearly diagramed on back of each. I've tried almost all of them !!!

Hope you're still nearby. Will peek again at email before I lay this tired body down !!
Nan