Ok I have 2 computer at work one P3 600mhz one P4 1.4 . I wanted to switch the computers, so I took the 120 GBHD out of the P3 put it in the P4 fortmatted it no problems. Everything is tickey-boo.
Then I went back to the P3 installed the 40GB HD and nothing works.
The 40GB has XP on it and all I want to do is format. The CD -Rom will not open or get detected the same for the HD.The only thing I have managed to do is get it to beep like an alarm clock. Its really ****ing me off.
If I switch the RAM out I get beeps as well but I figure the RAM (pc133) is not compatible with the P4, But I am not sure.
Any help would be wonderful. All I want to do is get the HD and Cd-Rom working at the same time.
And I know they both work I was using them earlier today just in different machine.

Try the hard disk on its own in the P3. Then try the CDROM drive on its own and see if you can get the tray to eject.

If you haven't already been into the BIOS to check the drive settings, have a look at my article about getting the BIOS to auto-detect the drives - it's in the Member's PC Help Articles section of the forum.

Do you know what BIOS you'ev got, e.g. AMI or Award? What's the sequence of beeps? The beeps are made up of a number of short and long beeps - they translate into a diagnostic code to suggest where the problem is. If you can tell us the pattern, that will give us a better clue as to what the PC thinks it has a problem with.

Nothing happens now. When I put the jumper just on the HD I get a beep-boop-beep-boop repeatedly. The same if I install just the CD. And the monitor is black with the power button flashing. I have a Gigabyte GA bx2000+ MB and a maxtor diamondmax plus HD. I dont know what I am doing wrong.

Ok I amanged to get it to boot to CD. But it still won't detect the hd. I am not sure where ot put the jumper to make the HD a master. No matter what I do it sill keeps booting from CD and won't run Xp setup once it reboots.

There should be a label on the hard disk that gives a diagram of the jumper settings. If there's not, this Maxtor documentation is probably appropriate for your drive:

http://www.maxtor.com/_files/maxtor/...uick_specs.pdf

It says to put the jumper on the far left jumper pins, when you're looking at it the right way up with the power connector on the right and the IDE connector on the left.

If the CDROM drive is on the same IDE cable as the hard disk, set the CDROM drive to 'Slave'. Do not use the 'Cable select' setting as this is often unreliable.

If you haven't already been into the BIOS to check the drive settings, have a look at my article about getting the BIOS to auto-detect the drives - it's in the Member's PC Help Articles section of the forum.

Ok I have the jumper set right. I get the HD deteted and the CD.
I start to install Windows XP and I start getting DLL errors. So I run set-up again and I get no HD detected. When I finally get the HD detected the computer just stops on the System configuration page. Sits there and does nothing at the Master HD area right before Windows.
Is the HD pooched? how can I tell? I had a friend tell me I can run check disk on the HD, but I have no idea how.

Go back into the BIOS and just make sure that all of the values are still entered for the hard disk under the Primary Master IDE device. If the Type is set to 'Auto', then you should note the values for Cylinders, Heads, Sectors and the one at the end if they are shown. Then change the Type to 'User' and enter all of those values in. If no values are shown, you'll have to copy them off of the label that's stuck to the top of the hard disk.

I've seen the Auto-detect option being a bit temperamental in the past if you make it auto-detect every time the system boots.

There may be another option in another screen in your BIOS to put a delay on the hard disk starting up - set it to 10 seconds - you might find that your system was starting up so fast that the hard disk didn't have time to initialise itself and report it's size etc back to the BIOS, hence it was hanging.

OK I have entered in all the values. Although it will not let me enter the size. When I re-boot I get a light grey screen with white 0's flashing.

Ok I finally got it. a tiny tear in the cable. I got 2 new cables put the HD and the CD in different slots IDE1 and IDE2 and boom it worked.I kept getting error loading Operating system. So I formatted as Fat 32 and now windows is installing tickey boo.
Stupid bloody computers.........when it rains it pours.
Thank you for all your help.

Fantastic

Not a common problem - would have taken us a while before we thought of that one I reckon! So bad luck for having a problem like that but good news that it was so easily resolved

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