CD/DVD missing from Device Manager

[LouPaloma]

I have a P4 with a P4s533-x Motherboard with two HDD and two cd/dvds connected to it. In order to install 2000 and xp I disconnected the secondary drive and one cd and placed the HDD and remaining cd on one cable as master/slave. This worked fine and I managed to install 2000 on one partition and xp on the other. Then I tried to reconnect the other two drives, and this is when the horror started.

The way I now have it configured (and not working) is with the two HDD on the primary IDE partitioned into 4 Drives and the cds connected to the secondary ide. The hdds work perfectly, and the cds will initialize during the boot sequence, but when either 2000 or XP starts up, no cds.

This is what I've tried so far:

Switching Motherboards to identical brand that was working with a master HDD on ide0 and a master cd on ide1.

Trying alternate cds that work on other machines.

Switched ide cables. The cable that the cds are connected to worked with the HDD, so it can't be a cable problem.

I have another machine setup the exact same way, with two HDD partitioned into 4 disks and two cds on the secondary channels. This machine has the exact same motherboard. The setup is literally identical, the only differences being that one has 2000 and xp whereas the other has just xp, and the cd drives\video cards\ sound cards are different.

Is it possible that there is some setting somewhere that is causing my cds to not load? This problem has me buffaloed.

 

[lunitic]

Things I'd try:

1. Try the CD drives individually. They might be conflicting or jumpered incorrectly. I assume you checked they're jumpered correctly master/slave (don't use cable select!)
This will give you one of 3 situations:
- both drives work individually, but not together. most likely a jumpering problem; try the master as slave and vice versa
- one drive works and the other doesn't. Try the drive that doesn't work as master and slave, and both at the middle and end position on the IDE cable. try another power cable. If you can't get it working it is probably resting in peace.
- both drives don't work. Try 'm on IDE0.

Now you wrote the drives show up in the BIOS but not in Windows. Do they show up in the BIOS the way you expect them to (the correct drive as master etc)? How do they show up on the device manager? Are there any problems in the device manager?