My cd drive will only work without my IDE ribbon connected...and it is the only CD drive I have...any ideas?

Question

I am trying to install a video card in the PCI express slot...since there is no onboard video present...(which is a whole other story) But cant get my CD drive to connect to the system.

I have tried the jumper in every position, including my hand, and I have tried plugging the IDE ribbon into both available slots on the motherboard but still nothing.

When I remove the IDE ribbon completely, I am able to open the drive...but as soon as I plug the ribbon back in it becomes unresponsive.

PLEASE HELP!!!!! :)

Answer 1

Have you tried looking in your BIOS and making sure you have set up the relevant Master or Slave settings and Channel for the CD Drive?

If you are still stuck post back with the make and model of your motherboard and the type of each hard drive you have installed and how they are connected & set up in your BIOS

A board with SLI will poss default to Auto on all IDE Channels.  Can you get Video without the drive?  You really need to get the BIOS up - It sounds like you may have an IRQ conflict.  Did you add something else, if so strip it down the the bare minimum just to get at the BIOS.

Answer 2

Okay you need to make your CD drive a master drive and you should be able to see the BIOS even before you install the video card driver. After you put in the video card, you should be able to fire up the PC and check the bios. If you can not see the bios then there must be a problem with the video card or with the motherboard.

In any case, I don't think the the data cable got anything to do with opening and closing the CD drive. Data hook in or not as long as you got the power connected then you should be able to open or close the CD drive.

Try to check the motherboard manual too, maybe you are missing something.

Answer 3

fit your CD drive to the hard drive cable and set it to slave

On end of CD will be a jumper setup set jumpers to SL slave usually middle set of jumpers

Set your hard drive to MA master

ENSURE the ribbon cable has the stripe next to the 4 pin power plug on CD

this setup should cure your problems

Also check ribbon cable to M/board has the stripe next to the Number one pin