a person came to my house to put a cd burner in my computer and they disconnected the cables for the floppy drive the cd rom drive and the hard drive and never connected any of the cables back. i am not familiar with computer to connect the cables back can someone help me what do i do

Originally Posted by tmm5899

a person came to my house to put a cd burner in my computer and they disconnected the cables for the floppy drive the cd rom drive and the hard drive and never connected any of the cables back. i am not familiar with computer to connect the cables back can someone help me what do i do

Who was this idiot? I hope you did not pay for that service. If you did, you need to call them back and DEMAND they come fix it immediatey!

Connecting the floppy is easy because its cable has its own slot on the motherboard, the cable connection is slightly different (but easy to determine) from HD and CD connectors, and the motherboard connection is usually keyed (it will only go in one way - but even if inserted backwards, no damage will occur).

Connecting the HD and optical drives is more difficult because the connector used on the cable is important (you can attach 2 drives to each cable), as well as which motherboard connector is used - most boards have 2.

How many hard drives do you have? Does the computer boot up into Windows? If so, then the boot drive must be connected properly. From there, the other drives will need to be connected but we need to know what drives you have, and how they were set up before.

one cable has a connector in the middle what does that cable go to can you send a picture both grey cables are connected to the mother board
here is the way my computer is set up
cd burner on top
cd rom
floppy drive
hard drive
i can not send a picture i have to use a public computer to try to get help and please make it easy to understand

Originally Posted by Digerati

Who was this idiot? I hope you did not pay for that service. If you did, you need to call them back and DEMAND they come fix it immediatey!

Connecting the floppy is easy because its cable has its own slot on the motherboard, the cable connection is slightly different (but easy to determine) from HD and CD connectors, and the motherboard connection is usually keyed (it will only go in one way - but even if inserted backwards, no damage will occur).

Connecting the HD and optical drives is more difficult because the connector used on the cable is important (you can attach 2 drives to each cable), as well as which motherboard connector is used - most boards have 2.

How many hard drives do you have? Does the computer boot up into Windows? If so, then the boot drive must be connected properly. From there, the other drives will need to be connected but we need to know what drives you have, and how they were set up before.

i only have one hard drive and i do not know how they were set up before i decided i wanted a cd burner put in the computer

Stretch the cable out in front of you. Notice how the connector in the middle is not exactly in the middle, but off to one side? Two things to remember:

1. The motherboard always goes on one end, the Master always goes on the opposite end.
2. The Master always keeps the Slave near.

So the slave is in the middle and the Master is the end closest to the Slave. That leaves the other end, which goes to the motherboard.

The boot drive (your HD) must go into the motherboard's 1st or Primary IDE slot. The motherboard will be labeled, or check your manual. And the boot drive must be a master on the cable.

From there, you have a choice - technically it does not matter what you do.

Option 1.

Cable 1 - Connects to motherboard IDE 1

Hard Drive connects to Master Cable Connector
CD Drive 1 Connects to Slave

Cable 2 - Connects to motherboard IDE 2

CD Drive 2 Connects to Master

Option 2.

Cable 1 - Connects to motherboard IDE 1

Hard Drive connects to Master Cable Connector

Cable 2 - Connects to motherboard IDE 2

CD Drive 1 Connects to Master
CD Drive 2 Connects to Slave

I prefer Option 1, but that is just me.

You have two options for the jumpers on the back of each drive, and the options apply the each cable individually (you can have one cable one way, and one the other).

Option 1 - All devices on a cable will be set to CS (Cable Select)
Option 2 - The Master will be set to Master and the Slave set to Slave

It is usually easier to just set all to CS, and let the system decide (based on where the drive is connected to the cable).