Problems installing Sata DVD burner

[seriouslydude]

Hi,
I recently purchased a new DVD burner after my old one had stopped working. I came across the new Sata burners so I figured I'd give it a chance. The problem is that my motherboard is not recognizing the third and fourth Sata plugs. The DVD burner seems to be working fine that's why I'm posting this in the motherboard forum.

I have an Asus A8V deluxe motherboard and two independently working Sata HD's. I am confused about how to install my new DVD burner. My current settings are primary master Sata: Windows HD and primary slave Sata: second HD.

First I attempted to make the DVD the secondary master but that resulted in my pc not booting while it's endlessly scanning the drives. Then I attempted to make the DVD the primary master and the windows HD the primary slave. That worked and windows XP loaded but my pc wouldn't recognize my second HD whether it was plugged in as secondary master or slave. Plugging the windows HD as primary master and DVD as primary slave also resulted in the pc not booting. [edit: DVD as primary slave did work later]

Then I did some googling and read somewhere that it's got something to do with the settings in bios. Apparently you have to set the drives to be seen as IDE instead of RAID and that would do the trick. I tried this with various master/secondary settings and finally got my pc to recognize both my HD's and the DVD burner when I had set the DVD burner as primary master and windows HD and second HD as secondary master and slave respectively. Except after I did that windows wouldn't start up anymore while giving a message that windows was shut down improperly last time.

I've also read some stuff related to updating my bios but I'd rather not start downloading and installing stuff from random sites so I figured I'd post about my problem here.

Help please, it's only a DVD burner and I already regret not having stuck with the IDE that actually worked. I've been at it since Sunday just trying to hook up a DVD burner Thanks in advance.

 

[r_manic]

You can also check if there's anything wrong with the SATA cables. Perhaps all you need to resolve the issue is use another set of cables with your setup.

 

[seriouslydude]

There's nothing wrong with the cables. I've tried different settings and can get all of the hardware to work separately (windows HD and extra HD or windows HD and DVD burner) I just can't seem to get them all to work at the same time.

I've been able to hook up the DVD burner as primary master and the windows HD as secondary master and extra HD as secondary slave. The PC sees the HD's when booting, tries to load windows... and crashes and starts booting again. I think it's weird because I've read windows XP is supposed to load from a secondary HD too.

If I set the DVD burner as secondary master windows won't load at all, the pc will keep scanning for HD's and not find any. If I set the extra HD as secondary windows will load and my DVD burner will also work, but my pc won't detect the extra HD.

Does anybody know how I can upgrade my motherboard, my bios, etc? I've never done that before and it might fix the problem. I've got a Asus A8V deluxe motherboard. If anyone can point me to good online tutorial/manuals how to update motherboards it would be appreciated.