System won't boot when I connect IDE dvd burner

Intel's standard checklist:

New Drive was Installed
If you added a new drive (hard drive, CD-ROM, DVD) and now the system won't boot:

Make sure all drive cables are properly connected.

Make sure the correct power cable is connected to the new drive.

Make sure any drive jumpers (master, slave) are configured correctly according to the manufacturer's documentation.

Make sure other devices and cables inside the chassis were not disturbed or loosened when you added the new drive.

Is the DVD drive connected by a separate ribbon cable to a different IDE connector on the motherboard than the hard disk drive?

I already made sure that the calbed were properly connected. The same DVD burner functioned just fine when I had an IDE hard drive connected instead of a SATA hard drive. The hard drive is a SATA hard drive, so of course it's connected by a different cable, as the DVD burner uses an IDE cable.

Does the ribbon cable have two connectors or three connectors?

If it has three connectors was the DVD drive on the connector at the end of the ribbon cable?

The ribbon has one connector to hook up to the mobo and 2 to hook up various IDE devices. I tried using both connectors and I got the same results.

If the ribbon cable has color coded connectors the blue connector goes to the motherboard and the black connector to the master device and the gray connector to the slave device.

Since you have only one IDE device it must be jumpered as the Master device or CS (Cable Select) and placed at the end of the ribbon cable (i.e. black connector).

When you say the computer doesn't start up properly what do you mean? What are the symptoms? Are you able to get into the BIOS Setup utility and see the DVD drive listed?

I'd hook it up as slave, and make sure you're putting the jumper on the dvd drive as slave.

And make sure in your bios you select your sata hdd as primary boot. Really those are the only things I could see messing up the boot sequence.

Test the drive in another system to be certain that it works.


No. If it is the only IDE device, it must be jumpered as Master.

In the bios:

On-Chip SATA Mode menu enhanced?

Are SATA and IDE in Combined Mode?

What is the motherboard please?

Yes, I already know how to connect the IDE cable. Basically when I start up the computer, it doesn’t go past this one black startup screen that shows the name of the motherboard. I wasn’t able to access the bios then. I don’t even know how to use the BIOS to view the DVD drive. The only thing I ever really used the BIOS for was installing a fresh copy of the OS.



I already tried setting it as a master and slave (using the different connectors on the cable). What part of the BIOS do I have to do to in order to check the boot sequence?



I am already sure that the drive works, since I used it only a month ago while I still had everything on the IDE hard drive.



I have no clue what On-Chip SATA mode is. Same goes for combined mode. Can you please tell me where I could find that info in the bios? The mobo I’m using is a Gigabyte MA785GM-US2H.

Not sure which version of the motherboard you have.
Anyway, if you look at pages 44 + 49 of the manual for version 1.1, you will see a setting for the IDE channel and the options to autodetect the drive.
Make sure the channel is enabled and that the drive is correctly detected.

Does the tray on the DVD burner open when you press the eject button?

Ok I'll give that a try



Yes it opens and closes perfectly

Sorry I didn't get back to this thread sonner. I checked the motherboard version on the box and it says that it's 1.0. When I have the IDE drive hooked up, the main bios screen comes up but it doesn't go any farther than that. On that main bios screen, I have 4 options that I can choose from.

Delete --> Bios
F9 --> XpressRecovery2
F12 --> Boot Menu
End --> Qf lash

I tried each of those options, but I only have a blank black screen after I select anything.