Post your exact drive configuration. Fill in the blanks: Primary master = ? Primary slave = ? Secondary master = ? Secondary slave = ? Also, it's generally best NOT to pair up two HDDs or two optical drives on the same cable. One other thing...have you tried setting ALL drives to CS (cable select)? The drive on the end of the cable becomes the master & the drive on the middle connector becomes the slave.

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In addition to the above response, you #5 response crossed with my #6. If you have a cable connected to the port, wheater there is a drive connected or not you may get a message of some kind. You may have corrupted the drive settings in the BIOS. On the first screen where the date, time, drives, etc. are shown. try changing the settings for the secondary channel drives from Auto to anything else then exit that screen. Immediately reopen that screen and change the settings back to Auto again. Then save and exit the BIOS screens (F10).

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Well i will set it up with cable select and see what happens..

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Yeah, I was thinking of adding a comment about unplugging the IDE cable from the board if no drives are connected to it.

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The IDE data cable connection is properly called just an IDE connector, or if on the mboard, an IDE header - it's not a port. "...since i last had a HDD swap about now one of the 2 IDE ports on my motherboard are faulty..." It is extremely rare for the IDE circuits on the mboard to fail. Either..... - you have not installed the drivers for your mboard hardware since Windows was last installed from scratch - See (HERE) below - "If you no longer have the original Dell software that came with your model...." etc. - OR - You probably have connected the drives to the data cables wrongly, and/or you have the jumpers on the drives for one of master/slave/cable select set wrongly for their situation, or the data cable is damaged or has a poor connection because of you removing a connector from a drive. You can find out how to connect to the data cables and set the jumpers on the drives for master/slave/cable the right way on any hard drive manufacturer's or optical drive manufacturer's web site, or your user guide for your Dell model may have that. I recommend you use master/slave jumpering for all your drives rather than cable select jumpering. It is common to un-intentionally damage IDE data cables, especially while removing them - the 80 wire ones are more fragile. What usually happens is the cable is ripped at either edge and the wires there are either damaged or severed, often right at a connector or under it's cable clamp there, where it's hard to see - if a wire is severed but it's ends are touching, the connection is intermittant. Another common thing is for the data cable to be separated from the connector contacts a bit after you have removed a cable - there should be no gap between the data cable and the connector - if there is press the cable against the connector to eliminate the gap. "...when i DON'T plug anything into the other port, SETUP -> DRIVE CONFIGURATION tells there is 2 unknown devices attached" Device Manager can't detect unknown devices that are not attached. The entries are because of something else. (HERE) If you no longer have the original Dell software that came with your model installed on it, you must have installed Windows using a regular XP CD. Whenever you load Windows from a regular Windows CD (or DVD) from scratch, after Setup is finished you must load the drivers for the mboard, particularly the main chipset drivers, in order for Windows to have the proper drivers for and information about your mboard hardware, including it's AGP or PCI-E, ACPI, and hard drive controller support. If you have the CD that came with the mboard, all the necessary drivers are on it. If you load drivers from the web, brand name system builders and mboard makers often do not have the main chipset drivers listed in the downloads for your model - in that case you must go to the maker of the main chipset's web site, get the drivers, and load them. If you have not installed the drivers for the main chipset... - it is common for the IDE controllers on the mboard to not be correctly identified, by Windows, and if they aren't, it is common for at least one or some of your hard and optical drives to not be correctly identified, especially if they're on the Secondary IDE controller. - if the mboard has USB 2.0 built in, it's controller will be recognized only as an unknown device. If you have not installed the drivers for the other hardware built into the mboard , at least some of the unknown devices in Device Manager are usually hardware on the mboard Windows doesn't recognize or have drivers for. If you have not installed the drivers for all the cards you may have in the slots, some of the unknown devices in Device Manager are hardware on the mboard Windows doesn't recognize or have drivers for.

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not sure of specifics of what the bios looks like on this pc but in the bios are the primary and slave on the secondary IDE controller set to AUTO? (I am wondering if they were manually set to something different)

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"....even if i DONT have a HDD plugged into the SECONDARY PORT it still shows up as unknown.." You definately don't have the main chipset drivers loaded! "If you have not installed the drivers for the main chipset... - it is common for the IDE controllers on the mboard to not be correctly identified, by Windows, and if they aren't, it is common for at least one or some of your hard and optical drives to not be correctly identified, especially if they're on the Secondary IDE controller." See response 11! Settings in the bios Setup must presently have the secondary controller enabled because Windows can't detect it unless it is enabled there.

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Apparently you like the visual. Here's how it would look using CS jumper settings for both drives: []--- PRIMARY CHANNEL (Port 1) | | | []--- OPTICAL DRIVE (slave) | | | []--- HDD w/OS (master)

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Well I can change them to AUTO or OFF , but anyway i set it up so PRIMARY has IDE 80gb and EIDE 160gb connected with CABLE select and SECONDARY with my DVD-R drive and it works ...thanks for all ur help guys!

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Works and works correctly are two different statements. Install the MBoard chipset drivers, if you haven't. WinXP may not be capable of configuring your hardware correctly. Logon to the Dell site and let the site check your configuration for missing drivers.

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"....even if i DONT have a HDD plugged into the SECONDARY PORT it still shows up as unknown.." If you still see that in Device Manager, your DVD drive will probably not be detected as a burner drive properly. In that case, you still must load the main chipset drivers. You can confirm whether the DVD drive and the hard drives are running in their proper modes. See this: http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/devic... E.g. If your DVD drive is a more recent combo one that is capable of 16X or greater DVD +R ot DVD -R , it should be in Ultra DMA 4 mode, providing it is connected to an 80 wire data cable as it's supposed to be. If it's older than that it should be in Ultra DMA mode 2, or Multiword mode 2, and a 40 wire data cable is fine as long as there is no other drive on the same cable that requires an 80 wire cable.. If you hard drives are capable of 133mbps, they should be in Ultra DMA mode 6, if your mboard supports that, or the highest DMA your mboard supports. If any connection your drive is on is in PIO mode, try setting it to DMA if available, save settings, go back in, see if it has changed to a higher mode. If the drive won't go out of PIO mode, or if it's in mode 2 when it should be in mode 4, you need to load mboard chipset drivers. If it still won't go out of PIO mode, or won't change to mode 4 from mode 2 if the drive supports it, something else is wrong. E.g. If the DVD drive is one that requires an 80 wire data cable, it may not go out of PIO mode or can't go out of mode 2 if it is connected to a 40 wire cable.

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