Seriously, can ya help?? o_0

no ones responding to my old post so im making a new one (mods, if you believe it to be unecessary remove it) but i really need some suggestions.

i try not to muck around with the cofiguration of my hard ware but low and behold i did.

Problem:
i have two hard drives in the comp, one master, one slave - no problem here

however, as soon as i connect my cd burner using the third bundle of wires which look like a wide piece of tape (theres 3 of these, one to the floppy and the 2 hdd connected to the other "tape"(can someone tell me what they're called??)) the comp cant detect the other hard drives and hence wont boot up

any suggestions?

It sometimes happens..

The "tape" is called a ribbon cable.

Now with your HDs jumper them master ( boot drive ) and slave, and put them on IDE 0

Now get the other ribbon cable and jumper the CD rom master and plug it in..

I think that you have them all jumpered differently and the system thinks your Cd rom is the master boot drive..

And set your bios to boot from HDD 0

All will be fine..

Failing that remove all of the jumpers at the back of the drives and let the bios work it all out for itself..

yeah i checked the ribbon cable ( :P ) and im fairly sure its the primary IDE.

Yet again, when i connect the cd-rom it cant detect the hard drives. (the ribbon cable that i connected the hDD to has a pink stripe on the side - mean anything?)..its difficult becasue the mother board (asus) has primary IDE and Seconday IDE labels right next to eachother

if you think a pic would help ill put one up

use the primary ide for the hdds and the sec. one for the burner. this has happened to me alot (yes, i have an asus mobo) when i disconnect my dvd rom or the hd. last time this happen i turned to switch off at the power point and then back on and it worked fine.

Quote from Animas:
last time this happen i turned to switch off at the power point and then back on and it worked fine.

ummm dont do that andrew.

Ok your hdd that is the 1 with the OS on it is your primary master .. that is the first on the ribbon cable caled the IDE cable next after that is your primary slave hdd in connects to the connector at the end of the cable.

in bold is the jumper settings that have to be set on the back of the hdd's accordingly.
Plug that cable in the primary IDE connector on the mobo.

Ok CD Roms are the same whether you have 1 or 2 .. make sure the set up is the same as the hdd but instead of plugging into the primary hdd you are plugging into the secondary ide channel ..

gl my son

Thanks guys,

thanks kurt, ive got the cd rom connected now and i can view whats on a cd, yet it is extrememly slow when reading and is almost impossible to copy off

the ribbon cable for the hdd and cable for the cd rom are slightly different, one looks like its composed of cables which are of a larger diameter than the other ribbon cable i.e i think there is more wires in one than the other...

is it possible i am using the wrong cable for the wrong hardware - should i swap them around?