This seems to be a strange problem... I have not encountered such problem ( My comp has a SATA HDD, a PATA HDD and a combo drive, and I have worked with both SATA as bootup and PATA as bootup)... I guess the best solution would be to have a service engineer come check it out... If possible, get a second computer (from a friend, etc) where you can hook up the harddisk and transfer via LAN... The last alternative as far as I can think of is to buy an external casing (costs less than 1k AFAIK) and connect the old HD through the external casing...
Arun
