First timer...

[Tigerbite]

Well, I've been around computers since I was 6 (14 years), but I've mainly been into software, and recently I plugged my desktop into a bad outlet and fried the power supply and the motherboard. Since I was on a small budget, I figured I'd just buy some replacement parts and hope for the best.

Well, I bought a new power supply, mobo, cpu fan, ram, and video card.

My computer turns on and all, but I can't get past the "press del to setup" "press f8 for boot" and "press f1 to continue" screen.

I was also told that the Master had to be the hard drive and the slave had to goto the cd drive. Well, when I do that, the cd drive isn't detected, but when I have the master sleeve in the cd drive, they're both detected, BUT they're detected as the "third" driver...the primary and and secondary drives all show up as undetected.

Any idea what I'm doing wrong?
Also, I tried installing XP when I had the cd drive as my master, but after "formatting the space" it went back to the setup/boot screen.

I'm stuck :(

[shadowpr]

Please list all parts, make and model.

[Tigerbite]

Okay, well, I actually have the computer running now, everything in the right place EXCEPT my hard drive and cd drive are set as the third drives instead of the primary drives (so I have to boot them manually each start up.) How do I fix this?

[shadowpr]

You might have to put them on the primary slot on the mother board. You might have to set the jumpers.

[Tigerbite]

What do you mean by primary slot on the mobo? They're IDE drives, and there's only 1 IDE slot on the mobo. As for setting the jumpers, I tried different positions for both the cd and hard drive, (because they're older drivers and I don't have there documents)...but they always end up on third, rather than primary or even secondary drives :/

[doubledragon5]

Do you have any sata ports? If so then buy sata hd, and put your opticals on your ide... I don't think it is wise to have a optical slaved to the HD IMO...

[flanzig1]

Should have gotten a new ribboncable with the motherboard, use that one on the drives. The cable should have a blue and gray and black connectors. The blue to the motherboarboard, the gray for the CD drive and the black for the HD. Set the jumpers on both drives to CS(cable select)