A friend and colleague of mine is having a problem with her machine. She was using it the other week and it just suddenly crashed out on her and now doesn't pick up on the hard drive being there at all. I tried a hard drive that I had that was spare (that I knew worked) to see if it was the hard drive but no joy - it wouldn't pick up on that either. I've checked the cable, even changed the cable but still no joy.

Everything else seems to work fine it picks up on the floppy drive and the CD drive fine no problems there. I wondered if it was the motherboard and a faulty connection. Any ideas anyone?

You will have 2 IDE slots, try swapping them round. Also check in the BOIS to make sure they are set to auto and not to a particular drive or none. (restore factory defaults) If the CD-ROM is coming up on the second channel, stick it on the first channel, (where the H/D was connected to the main board) if it works it is unlikely that the system board is faulty.

Originally posted by neeeeeeeeeek Also check in the BOIS to make sure they are set to auto and not to a particular drive or none. (restore factory defaults) [/B]
That'd be my bet too... you could have a dead CMOS battery (the little watch like batter on your board)...

or the BIOS settings have gotten scrambled..

There's a little jumper setting that can clear the BIOS.. but recommend you find the manual and check what it says to do to reset the bios.

Thanks alot I finally got round to looking at it again (my daughter passed her freshers flu on to me so not been too well) I had swapped the connectors before but completely forgot to change it over in the bios. Did that this time and it now works and that includes the cd drive. :thumbsup: :clap:

Oh well whatever it was at least it works now.

Thanks again for your help. :thumbsup: