Hi Groomerdriver, and everyone else!
Great to see a positive outcome occurred while I was asleep. Sounds like (in order of probability).
(a) You've got a wireless USB mouse adapter that's become "persona non grata" to your motherboard. This can cause the boot process to be halted because the BIOS can't properly identify the faulty USB device "doodad" and tries to boot off it anyway.
(b) Your PCI IDE adapter was causing a similar problem.
(c) <<WARNING - EXPLICIT TECHNICAL CONTENT>> Your "Mass storage controller" (I'm guessing this is your PCI IDE adapter), "Network controller" (NIC) and one "Serial Bus Controller" (could be a PCI modem) all share one processor interrupt (IRQ) 9. This is not a problem if the motherboard BIOS supports IRQ sharing but if not, it could be that detection of one of the three devices has suddenly changed to 9 and is causing conflict.
The issue is "fixed", but something is still weird!
1. Plugged in a PS2 mouse.....not the wireless mouse doodad (plug-in thingy).
2. I replugged in the USB port cable to the motherboard --- everything worked fine (I didn't check to see if the ports are working though)
3. I plugged the IDE card into a different PCI slot...plugged in the 2nd HD and everything worked fine
The dang this runs just like before!!!!! Again, I haven't tried using a USB port yet.
I plugged in the wireless mouse doodad into our other PC and the doodad isn't showing a power light, and the mouse doesn't work.
Quick FYI -- The modem card was removed a long time ago.
Is this PC trying to give me advance warning of an impending crash, or did the wireless mouse doodad going bad cause the problem? I don't want to buy another tower if I don't have to but.....