problem...

[Jdinh04]

okay well, my brother and i are working on a new pc... we have everything finished. but when we boot up the system, DOS says that the harddrive or the dvd rw isn't read, the IDE cables are plugged in right but it just won't read the 2 drives, any idea what we should do to install windows xp ?

 

[Fern]

Do you mean they don't show up in the BIOS?

Anyway, check the jumpers on the drives. (watch out if the HD is a WD)

Once had a weird problem where my known-good working HD and optical drive weren't showing up bios etc. It was a brand new psu that came with the new case. After tearing my hair out trying to figure out WTF was going on, I found out that half the 4 pin connectors were DOA. The ones I plugged into my drives were bad (no power).

 

[Jdinh04]

hmm... what do you mean by HD is a WD ?

 

[Fern]

The Western Digital HD requires the jumper to be removed if its a master on its own IDE cable. In otherwords, if its a master and you have the jumper set to master it won't work very well. Its a bit odd and pops up here from time to time.

I find it really annoying personally. I move my drives fairly often. I find it difficult for some reason to remember to take the jumper off if I pull an optical drive out, for example. Then it is a pain to keep up with loose HD jumpers too.

 

[Jdinh04]

hmm... alright thanks, i'll try it and get back to you..

 

[OneClone]

Try this:
Place the cdrom on one IDE cable and the WD HDD on another IDE cable.

set the jumpers correctly.

Put the HDD on IDE socket zero. put the cdrom on IDE socket one.

i hope this helps.

/CLONE

 

[Jdinh04]

hmm.. k thanks