This problem is actually pretty common, but as this problem gets posted frequently, I can never find a solution. I have posted this b4, but the solution given to me did not work. That day when my computer failed to recognize my hard drives, I had just deleted some worm. My computer when to the blue screen, so I restarted my computer. After that, the status shows up at the startup screen as: Primary Drive: None Slave Drive: None Secondary Drive: None Slave Drive: None I have taken steps to resolve this issue by installing new cables, setting bios to autodetect, and I even tried out my hard drive in a working machione and it works fine. None of these worked. My name really tells who I am in terms of experience in computers. I haven't really touched bios that much, so posts explaining things such as IDE channels and anything with IDE, I am lost! I already noe how to get into the bios setup screen, so if you can, please explain to me where to go in terms of bios to get this issue, resolved. My explaining is not too great, so if you need more clarification, please say so. Thx!

I suggest that you try clearing the CMOS by using the onboard jumper or by removing the battery for awile. This will reset the BIOS to factory defaults. You will then need to reset the time & date, enable or disable any onboard hardware you wish to use and in advanced settings you should find a setting for your IDE channels. Enable both. To maneuver in the BIOS screens you use the keyboard. page up/dn, arrow keys, tab, escape, enter, and somtimes F keys. There are tabs accross the top of most home screens. Use arrow keys to get to the desired tab. Hit enter to open that one. scrolling up or down is done with Page up/dn or arrow keys. Enter will expand an entry. I suggest you use factory defaults for most things. Set time & date. Boot order, your boot harddrive is HDD0. I suggest first boot device CD, second HDD0. If you don't wish to use the onboard hardware you usually need to disable it. That should get to going. Most motherboard will auto detect the processor & memory.

When you post here, you are supposed to keep posting in the same thread (string of posts)if your subject and problems are the same. The large number of posts here requires you try to answer or follow up on your thread as fast as you can reasonably manage, because your post/thread will be far down the list in a short time. Many who answer here will keep track of whether you or others answer the thread by adding the thread to their MyComputing.Net Message list, which is what you should do as well - then it doesn't matter if your thread is not in the top of the list - someone will probably answer, providing you yourself bother to update your progress or lack of it in a reasonable amount of time. If you feel your thread has gone too far down the list of current posts and you make a new post/thread, you should at least find the original post/thread include it's address in your new post and thread about the same subject. In your case that's here: http://www.computing.net/hardware/wwwboard/forum/44403.html In that I found you said: "A power surge is out the question because I use a surge supressor and there was no lighting at the time." That's not necessarily out of the question. There are poor spike/surge suppressors, and better ones. If yours doesn't have an led on it showing whether the protection is intact it's a poor one. If yours didn't come with a warranty protecting you against damage to equipment of $xxxx, it's a poor one. Everything connected to the computer must be protected - that includes all the directly AC powered and AC to DC power adapters for your printer, router, modem, etc., and your cable and/or your telephone line. Lightning doesn't necessarily have to be close enough for you to notice it to cause power spikes or surges on your power grid. Overloading of the power grid alone can cause these problems - this is more common in areas where and when it is very hot and the air conditioning load is high. A power outage in your area or breaker tripping in your own house can generate these problems. Etc. etc. It is extremely unlikely your getting rid of that worm caused this problem directly. OverThe Hill's suggestions are a good thing to try. It is also possible your power supply is failing, which is quite common - hard drives require both 5 volts and 12 volts to operate - if one of them is inadequate or missing, your hard drives will not be found by the mboard because they are not actually functional. I have seen cases where a mboard will operate, probably not fully, when the power supply is failing and e.g. 5 volt power is missing. How do you tell if the PS is malfunctioning or dead? The best way is to borrow a known good PS with enough capacity and try it, or try your PS in a working computer. Make sure all the wire colors and numbers of wires on the main connector from the PS are the same - if they are not one PS is not compatible with the other! If you can't do that.... take it to a computer repair place and have them try another PS, or....... Sniff the PS fan outlet area with the power off - a strong burnt wiring / burnt plasticy smell indicates the PS has been overheating or has been malfunctioning, regardless of whether the PS fan is spinning properly. Try turning the PS fan from the back of the case with a pencil or something slim - it should move in jumps, but be easy to turn - if it is harder to turn, the fan is spinning slower than it should or has stopped spinning, the PS has probably overheated and damaged itself, and the PS is probably in the process of dying. Look in your bios Setup at the current voltages (if you have the monitoring chipset for that) - +3.3, +5, and +12 volts should be within 10% of nominal values - your Vcc (cpu core voltage(s)) should be within 5% of nominal value(s). Voltages that are too high can do a lot of damage in a short time. The PS fan should be spinning at the speed it is supposed to be - some spin according to how warm the PS is, slower when cooler, but it may not have that feature and in that case would spin quite fast. If it spins too slow or has stopped, the PS will overheat and fry itself, malfunction for a while, and eventually die.