Thanks guys. I'm going to try that.
Actually, last night under the advice of a friend I tried to remove the 2nd IDE Channel and it said that it was not possible to remove it by itself. Interesting. It said:
"This device is part of a multifunction device. You must remove the parent IDE controller first which will also remove everything else" - paraphrased.
The parent device is the ALi m5229 Bus Master IDE Controller.
Sooooo, I decided to remove the parent and figured that during the reboot it would reinstall it and hopefully the problem would go away.
But it didn't so that kinda sucked.
Thanks for the tips and i'm going to try the switching thing ... right about now. Wish me luck ...
May I also say that i've posted this on Anandtech Forums and still haven't gotten any informed answers at all. I come here after a long absence and I get some good advice lickety split. You guys rock.
I'm coming here more often for sure.