Ok its been a while since I've put together a PC so I can't figure out what I'm doing wrong.

I bought a used mobo/chip/g-card to go in my old PC which was crapping out.

To make things simple, I only have 1 HDD and CD/DVD drive hooked up.

I have the HDD connected to the Prim IDE slot and the CD to the Sec IDE slot. I've left the jumpers set as Master on both drives.

With the above settings, the system tries to boot the HDD which still has the old OS (XP).

The bios won't let me boot from the CD. The selection for the CD just says 'none'.

If I switch the cables so the CD is on the Prim IDE slot, it will boot from the CD, but the XP install fails because it can't find a HDD.

Not knowing whether you switched the IDE cable-ends at the drives or at the board, try fully switching the cables and see if your situation changes. If it does, you might have a bad cable. If it does not, the secondary controller may be bad or the BIOS may need to be reset.

I couldn't tell you what you'd specifically need to do for your given BIOS or motherboard, but look within the BIOS for a function to clear or reset the BIOS or NVRAM.

If you successfully clear the BIOS/NVRAM you will need to reset your clock and will need to do a redetect on the devices (they should be found at POST). If after this you still experience the same problem, you may have a bad secondary controller on that board.

Well I did both. I have the rounded cables in this case, so I went and got an old ribbon cable and I got the same problem.



Can I put the HDD and CD on the same cable?

....it's late....I'll work on this in the morning.

thanks for your help.

(btw the Mobo is an Asus P4S533-mx)

You can put the HDD and CD on the same cable, but depending on what you're doing, you may see performance issues.

I found a thread on the internet which talks about USB issues on that board and affects on the secondary controller they tend to have:

http://www.techsupportforum.com/hardware-support/motherboards-bios-cpu/5629-usb-5-6-don-t-work.html

HTH

If you let it boot into the old XP, can you access the CD drive?

Just remember to reset the jumpers if you put them both on the same IDE.

Heck I figured I was the only one around here still running IDE HDD. Most have probably gone to SATA.

OK.

My question would be, "why do you want to boot from a cd?"

It sounds like a driver instruction issue (when attempting to load 2 master components).

In other OS you would want to create a batch file (off of DOS / Start disk) and also possibly from the hard drive itself.

In my opinion I think that you reached a common parodox.

I believe that what you are getting is a NORMAL outcome. <img src="/forums/images/graemlins/kewl.gif" alt="" />

The computer will boot from the primary first....and if OS present (and only then) will it go to a secondary (but not for boot purposes of course).

After the BIOS receives info that in fact physical components do exist....it waits for further instruction....and if absent, it will do exactly whayt you said it did.



Slightly OT: At work today I worked with a Marine VET and I called him on the Ward/at hospital. I was playing around and said,"Fire at will!" "We have a [Broken Arrrow]!"

He then said, " WILL FIRE FOR EFFECT !"

Thought that it was strange when I read you post today! <img src="/forums/images/graemlins/patriot.gif" alt="" />

Correction: It will still go to the secondary unit (without an OS) and that is it ------(stagnant/idle) -----Maybe--and then it does what it is supposed to do! <img src="/forums/images/graemlins/kewl.gif" alt="" />


Hope this explains things if not; then feel free to PM me......

I'm sure he'll fire up his 8089 and help you sort this mess out.

I still have a couple of Linux boxes with IDE primary drives in them. However both have RAIDs made of SATA drives. I use them for backups for the other systems. Each night all changed/new files are backed up to the RAIDs on both of them.