Installing CD/DVD drive quirkiness problem

I use win2000 sp4 on a kt266pro-r MB.
I just disconnected my sec. slave on ide2..so that i could flash the firmware on my LG dvd gsa-4163b.
The problem is...when i reboot..i get 2 beeps with the error message that my secondary slave is not atapi compliant.
The quirky part is that i disconnected the sec. slave..there is none there! i unattached cable and power cable.
(the bios only detects the sec. master and not the phantom sec. slave --as should be)
Pressing F1 --to resume. computer boots normally...and no other error messages.
I flashed my DVD successfully.
Every time i boot now..i get the sec. slave phantom error.

so my question has two parts:
a) Why do i get this error message when there is clearly no secondary slave to begin with?
b) Could this problem by a symptom of something wrong with my system that has been inteferring with my game install problems? (usually insisiting i do not have proper game disk in drive when i do)

To be clear..all i have to do is plug in my secondary slave (lg cd rewriter) and all is well again (or maybe not..since alot of games do not install well. I had thought it was a copy protection thing).

Its just...so quirky!

TIA :)