I went to Fry's and picked up a new case, 865PE Motherboard, 2.4/800 P4 CPU, 1024 MB RAM (on 2 chips), 80 GB hard drive, CD-RW drive, etc. etc.

This is the first time I've built a computer - I put it all together according to the instructions, I have the hard drive installed as a master on IDE 1, and the CD-RW drive installed as a master on IDE 2. The jumper settings on all of the hardware are at default.

When I boot up the computer, the CD drive is lit up but the door doesn't open.

If I push nothing when the computer is booting up, it will say:

Boot failure
Insert BOOT diskette in A.
Press any key when ready

If I push DEL or ESC or whatever it is to get into BIOS, it won't recognize anything on the IDE ports.

Thanks in advance for any help

 

Jumpers or your cables are backwards

 

The cables on the CD and hard drive have the red stripe facing the power cable, and they are connected to the motherboard so that the red stripe is facing the bottom of the computer. Is this right?

 

The way it works is that the red stripe indicates the wire for Pin 1. Both the motherboard and drives should have the IDE connector labeled with the first and last pins. In any case, just swapping them around won't cause any harm. For the drives, Pin 1 is always next to the power connector, yes.

 

yea..it sounds like its workin

just make a boot disk and install your fav OS and work from there....


the cdrom motor could be broken so dont discount that possibility if youve checked everything and it still wont open