Windows XP event id 11 "The driver detected a controller error on Device"

[Milind Puri]

I bought a Compaq DeskPro EP 6400 with a 10GB WD hard-drive and added my own 1 GB hard drive (slave) onto the same IDE cable as the original WD as the boot drive (master) as well as changed ribbon cable to the newer Belkin 'thin' cable. I have also added a CD writer added to the second IDE port. Under Windows 98 all appeared to run fine except for an occasional 'hang' of the system (I could never pin this down but w98 task manager always responded and allowed me to reboot; the problem appeared to happen more when it was hot and seemed to have been cured by replacing the IDE ribbon cable with the Belkin 'thin' one).

I upgraded to the latest BIOS from the HP (compaq) support pages for the DeskPro EP 6400 and installed the Windows XP Home upgrade. This appeared to make the system more stable and faster, however the XP event log started reporting errors (sometimes 7 or 8 at a time) saying "The driver detected a controller error on Device" nameing the IDE drive with Hardisk1 or Hardisk2 mentioned. I noticed no ill effects of this whilst using the system and cannot pin down exactly what is causing these. I tried to install the compaq diagnostics (which didn't report errors in Win 98) however during the installation I got the 'blue screen of death' STOP error 0x0000008E (0xC0000005, 0x804EA218, 0xF7713BA8, 0x00000000) with no driver listed after it - I can't find any information on this on the web. So I can't use the compaq diagnostics to check the system. I have tested the disks using the Western Digital online test tools (all except the long test) and these report no errors.

Does anyone have any suggestions what might be wrong or what to do next - should I change the hard drives or is there a way of testing the controller?

[Milind Puri]

PS - woops sorry I have probably posted this in the wrong forum - sorry (I'm not sure I can move it?)!