Urrr. Trust you ran FDISK on it before you reformatted it. If the Master Boot Record is corrupt then it'll always be wonky not matter how many times you format it (FORMAT does not affect the MBR).. .. .You could try the undocumented /MBR switch for FDISK which writes a new bog-standard MBR to the drive. Don't do this if you are using any special boot loaders to access your disk (stuff like Lilo or OnTrack). Or FDISK "Delete Partition" and then recreate one. But FDISK alone can't be trusted to truly zero out the MBR.. .. .(Untested)MBRTool is free from <a href="http://www.diydatarecovery.nl/" target="_blank">http://www.diydatarecovery.nl/</a> but is command line driven which can be a bit intimidating unless you are used to it. Use it to refresh the MBR (or nuke it totally and start again from FDISK [remember to set your boot partition to active or it'll never boot]).. .. .(Untested)Partit.exe from <a href="http://www.filelibrary.com/Contents/Multi-Platform/57/6.html" target="_blank">http://www.filelibrary.com/Contents/Multi-Platform/57/6.html</a> (download as Martitz.zip) can also totally nuke the MBR as well as other useful things.. .. .It's a good excuse to buy a new HDD, but a pint says the IBM is still OK (give all the connectors a good squirt of circuit cleaner).