About 3 weeks ago my CD-Write quit responding. Occationally it would work, but randomly it would choose to stop. Then I got this nice fancy case for my computer, took the guts out and put them in the new case... I've connected everything properly. Master/Slaves are set appropriately... The only thing i'm unsure about is the ribbon for the cd roms an the hard drive. Hard drive is connected to secondary while the cd roms are connected to primary, i don't know if that matters. What is happening is my cd roms aren't working properly still.. Even worse, at random times when I restart my computer it will freeze at the Intel slash screen and then give me a "Boot Failure: System Halted". I hate trouble shooting, so when i have a problem no one can help me with, I just reformat. These are some big issues for me so I "tried" to reformat. After the license agreement, I get a "disc is dirty or damaged" error. And another time I tried it, it said a system file was missing :| Because the roms are working properly i have a hard time trying to get my computer to boot from the CD. My friend told me to switch the config jumper and reset my BIOS. SO I've tried that and that did not work. I just, want everything to work :'( Please Help! thanks - Brad

redo the ribbon cables. install the harddrive on the primary cable connection. set as master with the jumper on the harddrive next, set one cd to master on the second cable. set the other cd to slave on the same cable. thats the proper way to install these drives then tackle the other stuff

Try connecting just one CD drive and try to get the system going with it. If it still acts up, try the other CD drive.

Often times two CD's on the same cable causes problems. Put the burner on its own cable set to master. Put the reader on the other cable with the hard drive, and set the reader to primary. Also, if the data cables are colored on their connections, remember - blue to motherboard, black to master, gray to slave. MCSE, MCSA Messaging, baby!