Help please, IDE drive issues

my buddie just put this computer together and its a p4 2.8 ghz with a asus mobo, and it has a ata/100 ide hdd. now where our problem is, is that when we go to start the system up, it is being dual booted with win98 and RH 8.0we are getting this drive not ready error. and my first thought was i think these things run at 66 mbps why the hell would it say the drive is not ready? so i uninstalled win98 from it and tried it again thinking maybe it was a windows prob, nope its still doing it with only linux on it. so i looked around on the net for some answears and i thought i had found it when this guy was taking about how he had the same problem, he said on this bbs to go to the BIOS and adjusting the timer delay to allow the systme more time to boot up, so i did that, and i still got nothing, the jumpers are placed right, both on cable select and theres power, i did the whole nine yards as far as trouble shootong, and i still have nothin. so if anyone can help or any ideas would be greatly appreciated. thanx in advance.

________________
"Just because I don't know something, don't assume i can't understand it." -me

Hmm..Did you look in your BIOS to see if it is booting from a drive other than C? Such as A? You could try chaning to to boot from drive C first. Another problem is maybe the operating system may not be installed correctly. Try reinstalling Linux and/or windows. If I think of anything else ill tell you.

the boot sequence is cd-rom - A: - C: but i tried booting from the c: but the same thing happend, we have fromatted the drive and put just windows 98 on it, and still haveing the same prob. and i know its not a seroius prob with the hard drive cause when installing 98 you have to restart the system quite a few times. and theres no problems untile the final restart.

Try booting from a Floppy boot disk. In dos or safe mode and see if that works.

Have you tried Fdisk /mbr (to clear the master boot records?)

Are you using high density IDE cables for fast ata drives? Also you might try cable select for your ide device hookup, the last plug on the cable would then be drive 0, the next is 1... also be sure you are on the primary controller.

<edit> I read your post again and saw you are on cable select...tried master/slave config?</edit>

well i would put it on master/slave select but ATA/100 IDE drives were made as 66.5 mbps d5rives so there jumpers are ment to be on cable select.i havent tried putting it on master/slave jumps but i doubt it would do any good cause thats not the settings they were designed to have cause there UDMA. thanx for the thought though. i appreciate it when people put some work into the thread. I;m really starting to think its just a bad drive cause i tried asking the BIOS to perform a full memory count brfore booting but that didnt work, i would disable the quick boot option if i could get o the damn o/s, and i tried booting from a floppy but i get the same thing. i really dont under stand...actually since im trying to boot from a floopy and getting nothing and booting from the IDE i get nothing then its not a storage issue but a obo issue or a PSu issue.... ill try to work on those thanx for the inside guys other suggfestions are welcome cause im still gonna be workin at it.