Rockbox won't boot (Result: -5), Original firmware won't boot !!!

[sordup]

Recently I tried to upgrade my HDD in my iHP-140 to a ZIF 100gb using the adapter from Hong Kong mentioned in other posts here ( http://www.rockbox.org/twiki/bin/view/Main/ZIFToATAAdapter ). After having some of the problems experienced by others with the adapter connection due to the pressure of squeezing everything back together I found, like the others, that insulating the folded connector ribbon allowed the drive to work properly. It worked for about two weeks then stopped booting with a boot error message of "Result: -5".
I replaced the old 80gb IDE drive and that was working fine for a few days and then I could not boot (either the orig. iRiver firmware or Rockbox). I opened up the player, removed and reseated the drive. That worked for three or four reboots, but now again I am locked out with the following boot screen error (see attached image). The drive works fine as evinced by installing it in my girlfriends iHP-140.
There are just a few posts here with this "Result: -5" error but nobody who mentions any results.
Powering up when connected to a PC through a USB cable proves successful. I can read from and write to the disc fine through Windows.
Does anyone know what this could be?
I've had my player for 6 years without problems and have made successive HDD upgrades without issue until now.
Can't quite come to grips with losing this old friend at this point! Please help.

[sordup]

I believe this to be a hardware issue, but my apologies if it is not:

Recently I tried to upgrade my HDD in my iHP-140 to a ZIF 100gb using the adapter from Hong Kong mentioned in other posts here ( http://www.rockbox.org/tw...view/Main/ZIFToATAAdapter ). After having some of the problems experienced by others with the adapter connection due to the pressure of squeezing everything back together I found, like the others, that insulating the folded connector ribbon allowed the drive to work properly. It worked for about two weeks then stopped booting with a boot error message of "Result: -5" (the same error, by the way, that I received before insulating the connector ribbon).
I reinstalled my previous 80gb IDE drive and it was working fine for a few days and then I could not boot again (either the orig. iRiver firmware or Rockbox). I opened up the player, removed and reseated the drive. That worked for three or four reboots, but now again I am locked out with the following boot screen error (see attached image). The drive works fine as evinced by installing it in my girlfriends iHP-140.
There are just a few posts here with this "Result: -5" error but nobody who mentions any results.
Powering up when connected to a PC through a USB cable proves successful. I can read from and write to the disc fine through Windows.
Does anyone know what this could be?
I've had my player for 6 years without problems and have made successive HDD upgrades without issue until now.
Can't quite come to grips with losing this old friend at this point! Please help.

[Febs]

I've merged your two threads.  Please do not start multiple threads on the same subject. 

I found one prior thread reporting this same code, but I doubt it is very helpful to your situation:  http://forums.rockbox.org/index.php?topic=6903.0

If you don't get an answer here, you might want to pose your question on the Rockbox IRC channel.  There are some developers there who might be familiar with the iriver bootloader who do not frequent the forums.

[sordup]

I apologize for the multiple post. I am aware that it is bad form and when I realized that it was more likely a hardware issue I  tried to delete the previous post but was unsuccessful. I am somewhat unfamiliar with the machinations of posting.