PCTech Forums

If you have a hard drive sharing an IDE cable, you will set it to master

If you have a hard drive on an IDE cable all by itself, its set as a single.

Now if you hook it back up and switch the cables, you will not see the drive.

A drive set up as a Master on an unshared IDE will not be seen. A drive set up as a single on a shared IDE may or may not be seen depending on how the cdrom is configured

If you have an IDE cable with a small square hole punched in it--this is a "cable select" cable (Compact and Dell use them). In that case the middle connector goes to the hard drive. It won't boot from the end one.

It is also possible to have the cable in the hard drive socket or the motherboard the wrong way

Hope this helps get you out of the "doghouse"

I think I'm in trouble. This morning I went to switch it on and I cannot see even teh PICTURE on the monitor. And I can't try another VGA cause it's; don't know how, PCI (1MB). It's old!!!!!!

Sounds to me that:

1. You don't have some hardware installed correctly, like your video card, it might not be in securely.

2. Your hdd might have suffered from a head crash while you were cleaning it, If it's a really old HDD it might not include the "locking mechanism" that today's HDD's have to prevent head crashes.

3. Your mobo is dying slowly but surely.

If you ever get your video card working again, I would triple check the cmos settings...

I have tried installing that PCI vid card in my Pc and it worked perfect.

Then unfortuantly it seems like the motherboard is dying...

When you were cleaning the computer, did you ground youself? Did you atleast touch the metal casing periodically during the cleaning?