PRIMARY IDE CHANNEL NO 80 CONDUCTOR CABLE INSTALLED

This is not an error message and is unrelated to the other problems you were having. It merely means that your IDE controller supports fast data transfer, but only if you use an 80-conductor cable. The motherboard can tell that you've only got a 40-conductor cable plugged in, and it's telling you that you might want to upgrade. If you use a new-ish disk drive, then you're probably not getting the best performance out of it and should consider buying some new IDE cables.

Of course, new IDE cables aren't going to do you any good until you sort out your RAM and CPU problems.