Well, here i am again. I have just exchanged the two Maxtor hdds for a pair of Western Digital. Unfortunately, it does not seem to have helped... I tried my knopix cd to see if it would load the disks, but no. But then again, maybe this old cd does not have the necessary drivers... So i tried the original cd together with the floppy with the 6.67, but no go... Now i am trying my batch of about 15 nlite cds i made previously and am hoping to get lucky. If not, i will cut my losses and return everything to the store while i still can... Thank you all for the support!