help with hdd and optical drives

[BamaFan29891]

hey guys.

so i have a hard drive, cd rw, and dvd rom in my computer.

i have the hdd set to master, and the two opticals to CS, but everytime i boot it says no operating system found.

when i do it like hdd-master, dvd rom-master, and cd rw-slave in the bios it shows a drive as master primary, slave primary, and it shows the cd rw as secondary slave...

i am running out of ideas of how to set these up and everything, any help?

 

[Atomic Rooster]

Is the hard drive formatted? Does it have an OS installed on it?

What ports are the HDD, CDRW and DVDROM connected to?

 

[BamaFan29891]

they are all ide, um it does have windows xp home on it...

let me check the motherboard connections real quick, one sec will automerge 2x post

here are how they are labeled on mobo

the hdd is on "hdd1 ide primary"
the opticas are on "hdd2 ide secondary"

 

[Atomic Rooster]

Ok. The HDD should be master on IDE1. Try setting the CDRW as master on IDE2 with the DVDROM as slave on the secondary cable connector.

Check in the BIOS to set the boot order to the HDD on IDE1.

 

[BamaFan29891]

ok one minute please :]

 

[muz]

Check in the bois to see if you ahve the boot order correct , make sure it isnt checking for a FDD for boot or something silly like that

 

[A True Folder]

You have a primary and secondary IDE channel.

Devices on the primary will be Primary Master/Primary slave
Third device on the secondary should be Secondary Master

Or

Primary Master on the Primary IDE and Secondary Master/Secondary Slave on the secondary IDE channel.

If any of the jumpers are set to CS then the position on the IDE cable will determine their nomeculture.

e.g. a drive set to CS on the "middle" plug on an IDE cable will be Master and the drive on the end set to CS will be the slave

EDIT: Damn that's a lot of posts since I started typing, I need my morning coffee, quick

 

[Atomic Rooster]

e.g. a drive set to CS on the "middle" plug on an IDE cable will be Master and the drive on the end set to CS will be the slave

You have that backwards. The middle connector on an IDE cable is the slave position and the end connector is the master position.

 

[BamaFan29891]

ok i setup like this:

hdd on "hdd1 ide primary"
then cdrw as master jumper on "master" part of ide on "hdd2 ide secondary"
then dvd rom as slave jumper on "slave" part of ide on "hdd2 ide secondary"

i booted to bios and bios recognizes the "maxtor" hdd on primary master, then it shows "dvd rom" as secondary slave... but it doesnt show up the cdrw...

when i look under primary slave it has some settings, so that makes me think it is the drive, but it doesnt show the name like the other two, and therea re no settings on secondary master

 

[A True Folder]

You have that backwards. The middle connector on an IDE cable is the slave position and the end connector is the master position.

I need coffee.