Running win98 SE

Ok I use a Maxtor 12gig drive as my main/boot drive (C:,
also the drive that came with my computer).

...A year ago i installed a western digital 40 gig drive
as a slave to the primary IDE.  For a year everything
worked fine, all of a sudden, on a hot day in NorCalif.
the second 40gig drive stopped working...actually it
didn't show up anymore.

This is really baffling to me because i didn't alter my
system at all and all of a sudden it stopped working, and
even after a OS reinstall it still gives me the problem.

I have two device conflicts according to device manager:

1) Under "DISK DRIVES" there is an icon that says "GENERIC
IDE DISK TYPE01" (there used to be another ide driver for
my 40gig slave drive, the used-to-be-d:-drive) the icon
has a red X over it (i hate that kind of conflict). It
states under the properties:

"This Device is not working properly because a device it
depends on, Primary IDE controller (dual fifo), has been
dynamically disabled."

how it got "dynamically" disabled, i do not know, one day
on a boot, it just stopped working...so naturally i check
out the Primary IDE controller (dual fifo) properties and.

2) under the "HARD DISK CONTROLLERS" i have: Intel
82371/EB PCI Bus Master IDE Controller - no probles

-Primary IDE controller (dual fifo) - with a conflict
(yellow circle, exclamationpoint)
-Secondary IDE controller (dual fifo) - no problems

Excuse the extra info, just wanna be clear...

...the properties of the primary ide controller
says.."This device is either not present, not working
properly, or does not have all the drives installed (code
10). Try upgrading device drivers for this device.

..now this problem i've come across with other devices
before, and naturally i just update the driver... but when
i do the driver search with the win98se cd it just says to
use the same one again because the "one already installed"
is best blah blah. Alas... i don't know what to do
anymore...

Under "PERFORMANCE" tab of the System Properties, there
are two items in the multi-select box.
1) "COmpatability-mode paging reduces overall system
performance
2) "Drive C is using MS-DOS compatability mode file system"

I checked the details of these items but it broughtme no
closer to a solution..

The win98 support site said that the "compatability-
mode..." thing might be due to large drives over 8gigs,
but i didn't have the problem before, and the site states
it was resolved in win98SE!!! which i have!!..

Any ideas?? please help, everything important to me is on
my D drive! and i only have on computer to read my 40gig
drive.  Thanks in advance