I tried to swap hard drives but it didn't work so i put the old HD back in but it said IDE HD error & won't boot. I can't see any loose cables i've forgotten but can anyone help? I've swapped the drive before & it was fine, just plugged it back in. thanks Morag

Two things to try. Re-seat the IDE cable in both motherboard and drive. Reset bios. If these fail download a diagnostic prog from the harddrive maker and see what it says. I used to have a signature but it disappeared and I just couldn't be bothered writing another so please feel free to ingore this.

I reseated it twice but no different, except when i tried putting the cables on upside down & it told me the HD was incompatible. (OK it was a silly thing to do but I had to try something!). How do i reset the BIOS - I don't know where it is or what it looks like? thanks Morag

If you tried connecting an ide cable upside down, and if one of the holes in its connector is blanked, you will have bent a pin on the hdd. This needs to be straightened very carefully. Good Luck - Keep us posted.

to reset bios you can use the cmos battery jumper on the motherboard, usually near the silver coin battery, or go into bios/setup and select an option like Load failsafe defaults or Load Optimum settings. This puts it back to the factory settings - but you will lose any special settings which have been made in the past to make certain things work eg. you might find the USB ports dont work unless you go back into bios and enable them - the defaults vary on different makes. or You could go into BIOS setup and make sure the settings on all drives are AUTO and if it has option of detect IDE drives then use it. Most computers get into bios/setup by tapping the Delete key when you switch on, but some need f2 or f10 key - and maybe other keys. It is very rare for it to be something other than delete or f2 of f10

are your jumpers set correctly? Perhaps you've overlooked this in haste. AMD Athlonxp 3200+ OC Asus A7N8x-deluxe-E ATI AIW 9600pro 2x WD SATA raptors/raid0 160gb Corsair XMS3200 16x Lite-on DVD 12x DVD-R wireless card used as p

Thanks for the suggestions, i'll give them a go. I don't know where the jumpers are but I didn't touch anything on the drive or PC except to unplug & plug in again so not sure if it's that but will poke around. You must think i'm nuts fiddling about when I know so little but it seemed so simple....! Morag