just wondering... what happens if I use the 40 conductor cable instead of the 80 conductor one? also, how do I know what kind of cable do I have? cuz I just hook it up and when am booting it it says "setup is inspecting your computer's hardware configuration..." and it stays like that for ever ... I checked out the bios and it is detecting the hardrive and its memory. So what do I do? get a new cable? >.<?

Both are 40 pins. The older cables are 40 pin with 40 conductor wires. The newer are 40 pin with 80 connector wires (a ground for every connector).

I would suspect that your current cables are 40/40. You can physically see the ridges in the ribbon. A 40 is noticeably rougher. You have 40 ridges across the same width ribbon as an 80 has 80 making the 80 smoother in texture as the ridges are although greater in number are less in size.

You can try the 40 connector with the UDMA. It will not damage it but it probably just won't work.

You might as well get a 40/80 cable.

am using a 80 conductor which was the one that my old hard drive was using T.T

Are you using a Compaq Recovery disk or a Microsoft XP CD?


Also can you ID your specific model here:

http://h20180.www2.hp.com/apps/Looku...x=3&submit.y=5

am using a Microsoft XP CD and the model is a Compaq Presario 6470NX
this seem to be the product's specification:
http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/d...cname=bpb11684

From your specs:

Hard Drive 120 GB Ultra DMA

So the drive should be fine.

How long have you left it with the detecting message?

I would leave it for say at least 10 or 15 minutes. If it still does not advance then you have a hardware issue.

First off remove everything but the CPU/RAM/Graphics/CD drive/one Hard drive. Try again.

Verify that the Hard drive is Primary Master and the CD drive is Secondary Master. Verify that the jumpers are set correctly.

Jumpers are set the way the HD came, which btw are set in the same way as the old hard drive. I left it with the message for like 20 mins, then I desided to reboot and try once again but without boot disk... when I was asked to insert a boot disk and press enter I did it but this time it stayed black screen and it wouldnt do anything. Also, I tried to boot it with a floppy disk to see if my cd was bad or something and it happend the same thing T.T
I did all of this only with the basic components on. Also, the HD was set to be primary master

Did you remove all other hardware?

I would put the old drive back and follow the same procedure (boot the XP CD and begin Setup) and see what happens.

my old hard drive has some important information in it so I cant format it and install windows again though I put the old drive back and its working as usual. =/
the only things I had on the chasis were power supply, motherboard, graphic card, processor, 1 ram stick, CD and floppy drive.