PC wont boot from CD

[ktat73]

PLease could someone assist me.

I have replaced the hard drive and the cd drive on a pc. When I boot up I go into BIOS ok and check the settings. Things seem ok and I change the boot order to boot from the CD.

With the XP cd in, I reboot and the screen then dies and nothing happens. The CD apprears to be spinning and the fans are all operating and the lights for the hard drive are winking away.

In the BIOS I don't know whether the cd has been recognised correctly - it only shows samsung under slave, but nothing under master?

Any help appreciated

[rjfvillarosa]

Are you using two IDE (ribbon) cables?
Is your IDE cable(s) a 40wire (all the plugs are the same colour) or an 80 wire?
How do you have the jumpers set on the harddrive and the CD drive?

[ktat73]

Originally Posted by rjfvillarosa Are you using two IDE (ribbon) cables? Is your IDE cable(s) a 40wire (all the plugs are the same colour) or an 80 wire? How do you have the jumpers set on the harddrive and the CD drive?

Yes I am using two IDE cables
They are 40 wire (all the same colour)

From the motherboard one of the cables goes to the harddrive and the other to the CD drive. I tried reversing the cables and the BIOS could not autodetect the harddrive, so I put them back they way they were.

Is it possible that one of the IDE's is faulty? Unfortunately I don't have the PC in front of me, but if I recall correctly the CD drive seemed to have more information in the master/slave drive info when I had the cables reversed and it could not autodetect the harddrive.

[rjfvillarosa]

From your reply it's possible you have a faulty IDE cable, But, before you write off a cable make sure both drives are on the end plug of the cable and make sure both drives are jumpered as Master.
If that doesn't work, use the cable you believe to be ok and then put the CD on the middle plug and set the CD jumper to Slave.

[Panama Red]

Keep in mind that if you installed a Western Digital hard drive you can't use Master jumpering without a Salve present. Use CS on an 80 wire cable (preferred) or Single Drive jumpering on a 40 wire cable.

http://wdc.custhelp.com/cgi-bin/wdc....i=&p_topview=1