Installing new DVD burner problems

[cabbage]

Im having troulbe installing a new DVD burner I bought.
It is a liteon 16x DVD-R\RW drive.

I have two drives right now, one a cd burner, one just a cd reader. I dont have any extra cables, so I just disconnected the all the cords from the cd reader, and left the cd burner as it is. I know the cords I took out of the cd reader are for the slave drive, so I set up the new drive as a slave (as I should have).

The problem is, whenever I turn my computer on (with the new DVD burner hooked up in it) it just sits there, beeping, also nothing shows up on the monitor. The DVD burner drive opens up when I turn it on, like its wanting a drivers disc, but when I do put the disc in that has the drivers on it, it doesnt do anything.

I have read many sites that tell you how to install it, but none of them seem to say anything about the problem I am having.

Any help would be appreciated.

[rjfvillarosa]

Try removing the CD burner and replacing it with the CD rom, if the IDE cable (the flat one) has three grey plugs then set the CD rom to master and the DVD to slave, if the IDE cable has a blue, a black and a grey plug, leave the blue plug in the mother board, connect the CD rom to the black plug and the DVD to the grey plug and make sure that both drives are set to cable select(CS), you don't need the CD burner your new DVD burner will burn CD's for you.

[cabbage]

Thanks for the quick reply.

Ill try that, except for the connecting to the motherboard thing. Im running on a old peice of $hit HP, and its compact as hell and I cant even find where the motherboard is.

Im not to keen on switching out the CD burner, as my dad doesnt like me buying things and upgrading the computer, but if ir works I guess ill have too.

Any other suggestions are welcome.

Thanks.

[rjfvillarosa]

If its that old then it is going to be a 40 wire cable (all grey plugs), connect the CD rom to the end grey plug and set the jumper to master, then connect the new DVD to what is the middle grey plug and set the jumper to slave.
When you boot the machine watch the BIOS screen (black screen white lettering) and see if the BIOS is seeing all the drives. All optical drives are very similar and use windows native atapi drivers to make them work so I doubt that old machine will not see the DVD but if it is that old then Windows may have problems writing and reading DVD's through lack of memory.
Try the cabling and jumpering first and we can deal with the windows issues later.

[cabbage]

Also, I noticed that it boots up normally if the cd reader is disconnected. Would it work if i just disconnected everything but the DVD burner, format it, then connect the CD burner back?

[rjfvillarosa]

Why do you want to format the machine? installing a new optical drive doesn't require a format.

[cabbage]

Sorry, I meant install the drivers. Got mixed up there.

Thanks for all the help. Im sure one of these ways will work. Thanks.

[rjfvillarosa]

You won't need drivers, windows should automatically see the drives and install them via the inbuilt atapi drivers, the only thing you will need to install is the DVD playing software and the DVD burning software.

[glc]

I know the cords I took out of the cd reader are for the slave drive, so I set up the new drive as a slave (as I should have).

Not necessarily. You should have looked at the jumper on the CD reader and set the jumper on the new burner to the exact same position.

[cabbage]

Like I said, its so tight in there I cant even check to see what the jumper is set too. I know its the slave drive though. The IDE connection to it is gray, the master is black, and it says master on the black cable, the one not connected to the CD reader. But even if I did have things messed up like that, it should at least load windows. Its not even sending anything to the monitor. I notice whenever I turn my computer on, it seems to check all the drives, and then sends information to the monitor. Its pretty messed up. My dad found out though, and he works in computer, so maybe he can help. Thanks.

[glc]

If the cable connectors are color coded and actually marked master and slave, you use Cable Select, not master/slave. I meant when you removed the CD drive that was working fine, you should have looked at the jumper on it, and set the jumper on the new drive to the same position before putting it in the case, and used the same connectors.