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It sounds like you may have the IDE cables hooked up backwards on your motherboard.. The IDE cable slot on the motherboard labled IDE1 should be where your Hard drives are if you want them to read as primary. The Optical drives are usually on IDE2, designating them as secondary.
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You need first to check your device if it has been detected on your computer, check your bios for hardware information, make sure the device is being detected. And also, check if it doesnt conflict on the other devices like your hard disk regarding the Master-Slave configuration, there should be 1 Primary Master, and 1 Primary Slave, Secondary Master, and so on, thats the case if you have an IDE CD-ROM, if you have Sata then you just need to connect it properly or just check if your Sata has been enabled on your BIOS settings. Also , check if you have a good powersupply , make sure the power supplied on your device is ok.
you need to enter the BIOS as the computer starts by tapping del or the keycombo your dell asks for to enter startup or BIOS setup, i vaguely remember f2 or f10, but the combo is posted on the screen as you start the computer.
once in the bios, the first screen should show your harddrive on the primary and your cd rom on the secondary. If you can reset these to "auto", restarting the computer should auto detect them unless a cable is lose inside or you have a virus . try this and post again here...
regards...
first idea is to set the Hard drives on the primary controller on the same cable, having your hard drive with windows as the master and the other as slave ( do this with the jumpers).
Next put your cd\dvd drive on the other cable on the secondary ide (the name is usually IDE2).
turn on your PC and pres delete to go to the bios settings,
once there go to the basic cmos settings page, and make sure you see the settings there as you wanted, Primary master first hard drive Primary Slave second hard drive
Serial ATA drives are pretty much plug and play. You just need to install them and set them up as a primary drive in your bios settings. The IDE devices can be connected on the same ribbon cable but need to have jumpers set on the back to determine which device is primary or slave. If the IDE devices are on different ribbon cables then most likely the hard drive jumper setting should be set to master or master (single drive). The CD-ROM drive jumper on master. BIOS should detect all drives You also need to assign the boot order in BIOS. CD-ROM should be the first boot device to load and install the new OS onto the primary hard drive.
No, you cannot use that cable--it is solely for the harddrive, and should not be able to connect the cd/dvd rom. That is for another harddrive in case you decide to upgrade.
You will need to get another cable for the cd/dvd rom---if you do not know how to install and/or change the ribbon/cable, then go to an expert, such as GeekSquad to take care of it for you. You may even know a neighbor or friend who is a computer technician. Good luck!
If you have the system disks and you can boot from CD, I would just follow the prompts to reload the operating system. If the computer cannot see the CD or HardDrive you need to reset the BIOS setting to factory default settings and that should restore the drives to be used. Note: Hard Drive should be Primary Master and CD-Rom, (not DVD-Rom if you have one) should be Secondary Master. If you have a DVD Rom drive I recommend unplugging both power and data cords from it and making sure the CD-ROM is set to Secondary Master, NOT Secondary Slave.
This should allow you to boot to a CD and reload the operating system. Unfortunately your files are lost.
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Hi Banyar, lets check the main menu & the boot order in you're bios. Start up the PC, as soon as you see any display on the monitor press the delete key every 2 seconds until the bios main menu loads. This is also where you can see the time & date. List on the left is; Primary IDE Master Primary IDE Slave Secondary IDE Master Secondary IDE Slave Across from these on the right is the matching device. If you have one hard drive the bios will show its model number on the right. Ex: ST150322A. (You're drive will be different). If you have more than one hard drive the second drive, (Should be listed as Primary IDE Slave). CD-ROM drives would be listed as, Secondary IDE Master & Secondary IDE Slave. Write down the model name of the Primary IDE Master on paper. Now go to the title, "Boot" in the bios. Use you're manual & go to page 2-25. High-light, Boot Device Priority & press enter. Set the order as shown in the manual. Make sure the 3rd boot device is set to the correct hard drive listed from the main menu. The model you wrote down. Once set save & exit the bios. The PC will restart. You should no longer receive the error message & windows should boot normally. If windows does not load normally than it is possible that the Primary IDE master drive is not the drive with windows installed on it. You must find the correct drive with windows loaded on it. Connect that drive to the Primary IDE master port. You may need to reset the drive’s pin settings so it is seen as the primary drive. Than change the 3rd device in the bios boot priority list with the correct drive. Windows demands that the operating system be located on the, Primary IDE master port. Please read pages 2-12 & the top of 2-13 in you're manual.
I'll assume each of these is an IDE device, meaning each has a wide connector versus a narrow SATA connector commonly found on newer hard drives.
Your motherboard should have two IDE channels, labeled IDE 1 and IDE 2, Primary IDE and Secondary IDE, or something similar. Each IDE channel can support two devices.
For best performance between the drives, you will want to have the Hard Drive connected as Master(Drive 0) on the Primary IDE channel; The CDROM should be connected as Slave(Drive 1) on the Primary IDE channel. Connect the DVDROM as Master(Drive 0) on the Secondary IDE channel, and the ZIP Drive as Slave on the Secondary IDE channel.
When connecting the drives, make sure you set the jumpers correctly; Both the Hard Drive and the DVDROM should have their jumpers set to Master, the CDROM and Zip drives should have their jumpers set to Slave. An alternative is to set the jumpers for every drive to Cable Select(CS), allowing the physical connection of each drive to determine whether its a Master or Slave device.
*Note*
If your Hard Drive is a SATA device, connect it to the '0' or '1' SATA connector on the motherboard. Have the DVDROM set up by itsself as Master on the primary IDE channel, the CDROM as Master on the Secondary IDE channel, and the ZIP as Slave on the Secondary IDE channel.
Hi,
the boot device setup in the bios, if you set atapi-cd rom as first boot device. then hdd second. and fdd last.
it appears that you have a faulty connection from the IDE ( 40-80 wire cable ) that runs from the motherboard Primary/secondary slot. check the cable goes from motherboard to hard-drive and is connected firmly, also check the jumper blocks ( small white plastic block ) is set to master or slave on both devices ( cd-hard-drive ) if both on same cable set hard-drive to slave and CD rom to master. if they are both set as master or slave, they will conflict with each other.
if you need further help, please mail back.
You forgot to check the jumper settings of the Hard Disk and the DVD Drive found at the back near the IDE and power cables. If you are using one IDE cable, then one jumper should be a Master, that's the Harddisk, and the DVD drive a Slave. If you are using two IDE cable then both must be Master.
You should check also the Harddisk jumper help settings printed on them, some harddisk needs the jumper settings for Slave presence on the same IDE cable.
If it doesn't work then It's either the cable or the DVD drive has a problem.
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