Hi, I rebuilt my computer for the 2nd time because I ended up returning the case due to a defect with the power switch.
Now I have a new problem, the BIOS is not detecting my hard drive. It says Primary Master: none and Primary Slave: cxvjdfsWRdj or some other garbage..my CD ROM and burner were plugged in also and once my burner was recognized, but then when I was trying to make sure the CD ROM plug was in correctly I must have screwed something up because it was no longer being detected.

The jumper settings are fine, I haven't touched them. (They're old drives from my old PC..and worked fine the last time I built this new one.) Auto detect is up in BIOS. Am I just not getting them in tight enough, or am I putting them in the wrong place, or what? There are only 2 connectors to the hard drives, the ribbon cable and the power connector right?

Please bear with me I'm fairly new at this.

If you have 2 HDDs on one onterface cable: make sure that one is jumpered as master and other as slave [oe else both as Cable Select].

Put the MASTER at ont end of this cable and plug the other end to the IDE connector. The slave goes in the middle.

My answer may be simple but has fixed many HD problems. Try brand new ribbon cables

both are good ideas - but I've had problems with the cable select setting at times.
depends on the pc, etc.

if you set the drive to "single" and remove the cd rom, will it detect it?

Thanks..I figured out my problem..The master was on the bottom and slave was on top..soooo the cables were in wrong.
Thanks for all the help