Hello I'm trying desperatley to update my system from ME to W2K. The problem I have is that when I boot from the CD ROM the setup does not find the harddrive. When I boot up the machine the PC shows that it finds the CDROM as the primary master does not find the harddrive until the next screen which it shows in Blue. When I go into CMOS it cannot find the harddrive either. I have looked inside the PC and the the end of the cable plugs into the harddrive so it is plugged in as master. Initially I thought I could swap cables with the cdrom but I noticed the cables are slightly different than that for the harddrive. Please help I'm lost with what to do.

thats strange for me that u cant find ur hard drive in cmos and u can find it in ur exisiting OS. i am sure u r making sum mistake in understand it in cmos. why dont u post the options that u see in ur first boot device in cmos here. may be that`ll help ppl here to find out which one stands for ur hdd. also there is no need to make ur cd rom as master manually if u want to boot from it. just give it 1st boot device priority in cmos setup.

It's possible you might have reversed the HD cable. There should be a "key" on one side of the connector to stop you doing it, but some cheap cables don't have it. Look at the back of the HD with the label on top- the cable should be "red on the right" (pin 1).