[plissken]

I'm not sure what the cause of this is, as nothing makes sense, so I'm going to list everything I have done in the hope that someone can pinpoint the problem.

Ok, I have an ASUS P5N32-E PCI express motherboard. Recently my computer got a virus that managed to fry my hard drive, came up as disc read error after reformatting. So the first thing i tried was hooking up an old IDE hard drive up, disconnecting one of the DVD rom drives(this my first PCI express board, dunno till you try right?). So that didn't work, and i hooked the old drives back up. I got a new SATA hard drive. Now when I turn on the computer, the DVD drives don't work, not even indicator lights. When they are disconnected from the IDE channel, they work, lights up and opens.

I swapped out IDE cables, checked and made sure there were no bent pins on the motherboards IDE connection, and nothing. Also tried messing with jumper settings, setting one to master the other to slave, both to cable select, various combinations, nothing ever changes. Keep in mind either drive works without an IDE cable attached.

My only theory is that the IDE on the motherboard inexplicably stopped working and that i need a new board. Though i don't see why that would stop the drives from totally working, but knowing how weird computers can be, it's possible. Can anyone make sense of this crap? I'm going out of my mind.

[zerocool]

Sounds like you are on the right track to me with the on board ide controller going for a long walk. If your sata ports are working why not invest in a sata dvd drive, no to bad priced, about £30, cheaper than a motherboard

[plissken]

LOL, it never occured to me that newer DVD drives would have SATA connectors. I went to Best Buy and picked one up, I'm now back up and running. Guess the IDE is bad, oh well.

Thanks man. :)

[4D(Fordy(Ford) Ollie]

Glad it's working. IMO I would have reccomended you upgrading the DVD to SATA even if the IDE wasn't the issue, I hate those damned ribbon cables!