strange I/O error that goes away on second boot

[Silveraxe]

I have an nForce 2 motherboard WITHOUT an onboard SCSI controller. I've
checked.
Disks are:
20 GB WDC as primary master, divided into 4 partitions to boot Win 98
SE, XP Pro and Slackware 10.
Sony DVD as primary slave.
Teac CD RW as secondary master.
80 GB Maxtor as secondary slave divided into two FAT 32 partitions.

When I boot into XP all of my disks appear as SCSI drives.
I understand that this is normal.

However, the first time I boot up XP in the morning it boots horribly
slow, I cannot access either of the partitions on the larger HD and I
get "An I/O error has occured." No error code, no nothing.
All the other disks (primary master, CD, DVD) work normally.
After one (most of the times) or two restarts into XP, the problem goes
away on its own. If I remove the disk with Add/Remove Hardware and let
XP detect it again, it works.

When I boot into Win98, it starts OK, but keeps detecting a PCI SCSI
controller and tries to install drivers for it. I hit "cancel" and
continue normally.
Linux just works.

Can you help me at least locate or solve the problem?
Why would Windows 98 detect a ghost SCSI controller? Does XP write
something on the disks? Is it a motherboard problem? Weak BIOS battery?
A Windows problem? A HD problem?

Thanks.
Silveraxe.

 

[Fantabulum]

I have commonly found that hardware of different forms don't share
very well. For instance; when zip drives used the 25-pin serial
ports (parallel port), they had the printer port on the back of the
zip drive so it wouldn't tie up your printer port. Thousands of
people over the next few years sent millions of emails saying "my
printer won't work with my zip drive, no matter what drivers I
install". What I'm saying is, I don't think it is a good idea to
have a HD and and a DVD drive on one IDE channel and a hard drive and
CD burner on the second: Try putting both HD's on the first channel
and the CD and DVD drives on the second (obviously, make sure the
jumper settings are correct).

 

[Rod Speed]

I have commonly found that hardware of different forms don't share
very well. For instance; when zip drives used the 25-pin serial
ports (parallel port), they had the printer port on the back of the
zip drive so it wouldn't tie up your printer port. Thousands of
people over the next few years sent millions of emails saying "my
printer won't work with my zip drive, no matter what drivers I install".

Different issue entirely to ATA and ATAPI devices sharing a ribbon cable.

 

[Irwin]

Hello. I don't know what the problem is, but I have installed XP pro
many times and never seen IDE disks listed as scsi in any of my
installations, so I would not agree that it is normal. Rather, it seems
abnormal and consistent with the other problems you are having. Sorry I
don't know what is wrong.

Irwin