IDE Cable Problem

I generally use separate IDE cables and channels for my hard a CD drives.

Anyhow, the likely cause of your problem is the setting of the jumpers on the back of the drives.

Your hard drive should be set as master with slave present.

Your CD drive should be set as slave.

If your IDE cable has specific drive labels on it (Master, Slave) it might be a cable select style cable.
If so, set the jumpers on both drives to CS (cable select).

Chas

Isn't this essentially the same question you asked recently except now it's CD instead of hard disk.

https://www.techrepublic.com.com/5208-6251-0.html?forumID=56&threadID=169785

You rejected all answers without explanation. So now you ask again.

Dalton

Confuscious say, "Man that reject all answers know everything already. Solve problem yourself."

Could be the controller drivers need to be reinstalled.
Open Device Manager,locate the controller in the list towards the bottom,if you see a yellow exclamation the driver software needs to be reinstalled

Ok, you were not clear in the question that the CD drive and hard drive were on different cables.

From what you have posted, you have 1 of 2 problems:

1, a bad CD drive.
The logic board on the CD drive has a hard failure that locks the IDE bus and prevents the system from booting.

2, a bad secondary IDE controller.
To check this, FIRST make SURE that your CD drive is good.
Then, unplug the hard drive IDE cable and plug the CD drive IDE cable into the primary IDE controller at the motherboard.
If your PC boots up, the secondary IDE channel is bad.

Chas

My operating system is Windows XP 2, Dell Demension 4300. I have a very similar problem. I have two hard drives and two CD Roms attached to two different IDE cables. When I use reboot or restart, windows XP cannot find the CD Roms. I have power the system off and restart again, everything works find. Perhaps I too should check the master/slave postions at the back of the drives, that might be my problem too.