what are primary/second/third boot devices in bios do? can i change them? are these stuff should be configured according to the set up of the drives and IDE's on the motherboard? 1 40 IDE 1 80 IDE 2 HDD 1 CD-RW 1 DVD ROM I'm just asking for a lil help. Pls bear with me, maters.

They are just what they say. When the BIOS is looking for something to boot off it looks at each one in turn till it finds a bootable disk. If you ever want to boot from a CD you will need to make the CD the first boot device. If you remove the CD then the computer will boot from the next device in line. However this can slow down the boot process while the BIOS determines that the CD drive is empty. Better the make the Hard disk first boot device again. I cant understand what you are asking in the second part of the question. 40 IDE and 80 IDE refers to the cable that connects the drives to the Motherboard. 40 way with 40 pins and 80 way with 40 pins. If you are asking which cable to but the devices on then the generally accepted best is: First Hard Disk - Primary Master DVD ROM Primary Slave Second Hard Disk Secondary Master CD RW Secondary Slave. Stuart

Yes, and it's best to use 80 wire cables for both primary and secondary.

thanks, StuartS and aegis. StuartS, don't worry about the 2nd question. i think i understand it now. i got the answers from your post. thanks again. I'm just asking for a lil help. Pls bear with me, maters.