IDE cable problem, how will I fix it?

IDE cable problem, how will I fix it?

Hi Carla,

I must admit that it is a little hard to picture in my head the problem that you're having since you did not specify any specs for your system.  I will try my best to help you thought or provide some possible solutions to your problem.

My first assumption is that your CD drive is connected to the power supply since you mentioned that you could still open it.  So that takes a bad CD drive out of the picture.  I can't tell exactly if you are using a single IDE cable for the hard drive and the CD drive or you are using separate cables for each of them.

So let's just say that you are using a single IDE cable.  Most computers have at least two IDE controllers on the motherboard, so for my first assumption, you have one IDE cable and one IDE controller on your motherboard.

If you have both the hard drive and the CD drive connected using a single IDE cable, one must set as the device O / master and the other must be set as device one or the slave.  It's important that they are designated specifically so there would not be any conflict in the use of the IDE cable.  Now to allow your system to share one IDE cable, you need first to make sure that the hard drive is set as the master.  There is a jumper setting in your hard drive (at the back) with pictorial representation on how it needs to be set.  If it is set as the master (or 'single' in some hard drive) and most probably it is set as the master, you need to check the jumper setting on your CD drive if it is set as the slave.

Refer to the image below:

Now that you have manually set the master as the hard drive and the slave as the CD drive, everything should work just as fine.

Another possible configuration is cable select. If both the hard drive and the CD drive is set to cable select, there should not be any problem with the connection too if you are using an 80-wire IDE cable.  Just make sure that the master (the hard drive) is connected at the end of the cable(black connector), and the CD drive is connected at the middle of the cable (gray connector) and the other end of the motherboard (blue connector).

Now to verify if both the hard drive and the CD drive are detected, you can check the system BIOS by pressing F2 or del at start up.  You should see a message during startup telling you to press a key to enter the BIOS.  Inside the BIOS, you should now be able to see the CD Drive and the hard drive.  There are many BIOS versions, so just try to navigate inside without making any changes.
If you have a Phoenix Award BIOS version, then you can just go to standard cmos feature or highlight Standard CMOS features on the screen and it hit enter. It should take you to another screen where you can see the IDE devices listed.