HDD and DVD drive not detected

[Lurno]

Greetings. I recently tried to resurrect an old Celeron 4A computer, choosing the budget friendly path (AMD). After many problems, the new motherboard worked. However, at first, it couldn't detect my IDE DVD drive, which I need to use to be able to do this:Migrating from Intel mobo to AMD mobo - XP dies with 7e Stop - Windows-XP-General-Discussion - Windows-XP, instead, it showed some random floppy drive. I tried disconnecting a sata adapter I had on it after discovering that IDE ports support up to 2 devices and plugging in both things in there. The same result. After a bit of time, I decide to try again. This time, it no longer acknowledged the HDD. Now it only detects a floppy drive that I did not connect. Isn't there any thing that can be done about this?
Specs: (although probably pointless to list)
Athlon II 260
Some random Sony brand DVD drive (IDE)
80gb IDE HDD with Windows XP
Transcend 4gb DDR3 RAM
BIOSTAR A770E3 motherboard
8400gs 512MB version

 

[Chipeater]

Have you checked the BIOS settings?

 

[atomichybrid]

Is you IDE cable old? it could be a bad wire, happened to me once. Also with the the IDE DVD and HDD you might want to check the jumpers incase both of them are not conflicting each other.

 

[Lurno]

After messing around with it, I got it to detect both things. I needed the adapter anyways... However, I disabled the intelppm driver, and Windows XP just flashes a blue screen really fast and reboots, too fast to read... I can't do a complete re-install... There are just too many family pictures on the drive! Not to mention the many drivers that would have to be re-installed... Isn't there any way around other than buying an enclosure (for the pictures)?
EDIT: I had an Ubuntu disk lying around. I used this to back up my pictures, which is all that really mattered. Anyways, thanks for the help, Rep+ for both of you. I really appreciate it.
EDIT2: The problem turned out to be the RAM...