I think i know why though... i installed a cdrw drive with my cd-rom drive but i later replaced it cause it was going bad. but anways when i go into the bios it says the hard drive is primarly slave and the cd-rom is secondary master, shouldnt it be secondary slave for the cd-rom?

never have hdd with a cdrom together

My setup, Primary Drive HD, Slave CD-RW, secondary Master HD, slave DVD, Runs fine. You just don't want to put the 2 Hard drives on the same channel, it would slow them down when transfering files. Smae with the CD-ROM's.

This gets discussed a lot & there always seems to be confusion on how to configure IDE devices. All you really need to know are these 2 things: 1. All modern motherboard chipsets support independent device timing...this means an ATA100 deivce can share a cable with an ATA33 device & they'll run at their respective speeds, independent of each other. In other words, the ATA100 will run at 100mb/sec, & the ATA33 will run at 33mb/sec when sharing the same cable...the slower device will NOT effect the speed of the faster device. 2. Data transfers are more efficient between channels (primary to secondary, or secondary to primary), rather than between devices sharing the same channel. So with keeping that in mind, the best configuration for your 3 devices would be: Primary Master = HDD Primary Slave = CD-ROM Secondary Master = CDRW With this setup, data transfers from CD to CDRW are across channels & from HDD to CDRW are also across channels. This is the optimal setup...however, it will still work if you have them configured differently, it just won't be as efficient...

Seems to me that you have your jumpers in te wrong slots. There should be a code on the HDD it's self, if not then trial and error will have to happen. The other thing you may have done wrong is "which socket on the IDE cable you have used on the HDD" (the middle one or the one on the end?)..... Use the one in the middle for your HDD and the one on the end for the primary slave ie CD ROM. also if you want the CD ROM to be a slave you neededt bother with jumpers just take them out of the CD ROM and it will automatically become a secondary to the primary (providing the jumper is in the right position on the HDD.