i have a Dell 210 optiplex with windows Xp. i bought it on ebay without a floppy drive or any cd drives. i purchased new cd drives, hooked them up, and the computer will not recognise them. what am i doing wrong.

Hi and welcome to D-A-L

can you get into the BIOS?

why was it for sale without drives, have you any discs with it?

it just does not have a CD-rom or a floppy disk drive. naturally it has a C drive, in fact i'm using the computer to write this message right now. it looks as though the cd rom's were removed before it was put on the market. all the connections are their. at least i think they are. and yes, i can get to bios. i'd be a bit lost thought. i'm barely computer literate, if even

if you get into the BIOS have a look what the setting is for the hard drive, primary master/slave

do you have 1 or 2 IDE cables coming from the motherboard?

if only 1 cable and the hard drive is set at master then the CD drive has to be set to slave.


connect your CD drive make sure the jumper is set correct.

i have two cables from the motherboard.
the jumpers seem to be a no brainer. is their something special i should look for connecting them that may be tricky
how do i set the cd drive to either master or slave and how would i check to see what it's set for now

hard drive diagnostics said that my hard drive is a Samsung Hd080HJ/P-Pass
drive 2 no device
drive 3 no device
drive 4 no device
though i have two cd- rom's connected as we speak. i'm fairly certain correctly

on the back of each device should be a little block with normally 3 positions MA - SL - CS

MA = mater
SL = Slave



also make sure the red stripe is nearest the powers socket on the drive. (Pin Number 1)

in the BIOS are the drives set to auto?

I was working on a Dell with similar issues last week. I concluded that the IDE controller (i.e. the ports on the motherboard that the cable plugs into) were faulty. I replaced the drives, the cables, drivers, everything, but just couldn't get Windows to see the CD and DVD drives properly (even though the BIOS could). I've now bought a separate IDE controller card that plugs into a spare PCI slot, although I haven't got around to trying it yet.

My advice to you David would be to connect one of the CD drives as the slave on the same (primary IDE) cable as the hard disk. If that works, then it suggests that your secondary IDE controller may be faulty ..... which might explain why the Ebay seller was selling it without any drives: no drives, no fault!

thanks DJ and Brain_damage, i just got a home a short time ago. i'll set a cd drive on slave and wire up as you suggested and see what happens.
also, how do you suggest i get to bios? when i boot up, do i go to set up or hard drive diagnostics?
i'll be in touch, thanks again

Setup. Usually F12 or F2 on Dells I think.