Hi There,

I am having a very strange kind of problem with my pc. I have recently bought a new pc the problem is whenever I take out the data cable of my CD ROM to attach another hard disk or when I take out the hard disk out... after that whenever i re-attach them my pc detects only any one of that components... either HDD or CD ROM

the same thing was with my previous computer... point to keep in mind is that i didn't change CD ROM and HDD in my new pc.

Could there is something wrong with one of CD ROM or HDD?

Please advise...

Thanks

Hi shahidkahlil and welcome to D.A.L.

I am not positive I understand your problem. Just to be certain, we are not talking about external CD and hard drive enclosures but we are talking about swapping internal drives, right?

What process do you use when you swap out these drives?

To prevent destroying your motherboard and anything attached to it, before swapping any internal hardware devices, you must:

Shutdown Windows
Power off computer
UNPLUG computer from wall - THIS IS CRITICAL!
Take essential ESD prevention precautions before and during procedure to prevent damage from static

In a properly configured computer, the CMOS memory (powered by the motherboard/CMOS battery) stores information about the attached hard and optical drives so the BIOS knows how to communicate with them. Every time you boot, as part of the POST (power on self test) the BIOS reads in the drive information saved in the CMOS memory and compares that to what it finds is currently attached. If a match, the boot process continues normally. If it finds something different, it is likely to not recognize the drive until you "Save and Exit" the Boot Setup Menu and reboot again.

So the first time you boot the system after swapping drives, you need to press the necessary key (usually Del or F1) to go straight into the BIOS Setup Menu, verify the installed drives are all properly identified, then Save and Exit to start the reboot process again with a properly configured BIOS.

Thank you for your response. Yes I am talking about internal drives. (both of my HDD and CD drives are connected with same IDE cable)

In my bios settings it only shows HDD that is detected and not CD ROM.

2ndly if I pull out the Power cable of HDD and reboot the computer... it then detects my CD ROM.

Now what I'm considering if nothing can be done in this regard then I should consider buying a SATA HDD to get rid of this headache. What do you suggest?

And how are the drive jumpers set? How are these drives positioned on the cable.

What do you suggest?

Nothing until we know more about your system. What motherboard? Does it support SATA? What OS?

What is your ultimate objective?

I'm using MSI board with Intel D945 chipsets, processor is C2D E4500 alongwith 2 gigs of ram. Motherboard does support SATA drives. No OS at the moment that is why I'm sick of this problem...

Regarding the positioning of the drives, I couldn't understand it... could you please simplify it?

Regarding the positioning of the drives, I couldn't understand it... could you please simplify it?

With two EIDE drives (hard and/or optical) on the same IDE cable, one is always Master and the other always slave. There are two ways to "set" the Master and Slave assignments.

1. Both drives have jumpers set to CS for "Cable Select" and the Master and Slave are determined by the controller based on the drives' positions on the cable. The Master (or Primary) always goes on the end opposite the motherboard connection. The Slave (or Secondary) always goes in the middle position. The Slave connector is always off-center, closer to its Master.
2. The Primary drive's jumper is set to MA and drive connected to the Master connector end of the cable. The Secondary drive's jumper is set to SL and the drive is attached to the Slave connector.

You cannot mix MA/SL and CS on the same cable. If only one drive, it MUST go in the Master connector of the cable, and the jumper must be set to either MA or CS.

Thanks for explanation

I just checked it today and my HDD is connected to SL and Optical is connected to MA connector... unfortunately I forgot to check the jumpers on both of the drives...

Just to check when I switched optical from MA to SL and HDD from SL to MA, it detected nothing...

What's your opinion?

unfortunately I forgot to check the jumpers

What's your opinion?

You need to check the jumpers.

I checked my drives' jumpers and noticed they were wrong... one of them was on CS and other was on MA... I corrected it and now it is working fine. Thanks for your help.

Just another quick question: could you please let me know or if there's already a question on: I want to set permissions on my computer so that no one can delete or install the files... I saw that at my university and really want to know that. (on both WIN XP and WIN 2003 Server)

Thank you.

I checked my drives' jumpers and noticed they were wrong... one of them was on CS and other was on MA... I corrected it and now it is working fine. Thanks for your help.

You are welcome, glad it worked and thanks for the followup.

Just another quick question: could you please let me know or if there's already a question on: I want to set permissions on my computer so that no one can delete or install the files... I saw that at my university and really want to know that. (on both WIN XP and WIN 2003 Server)

Since this is altogether a different problem, it is best to start a new thread for this issue.

This is not really a hardware issue so this should be posted in a more appropriate forum. Unfortunately, this site does not have a General Security forum to ask such questions.

I recommend you first check out Microsoft KB308419, How to set, view, change, or remove special permissions for files and folders in Windows XP. Then if still need help, post your question in the XP Help Forum.

Understand that XP Home and XP Pro behave differently, so it is important to keep that in mind. Win2003 Server will be more similar to Pro than Home.