Resolved dvd drives missing in device manager and my computer after installing xp

Should the small fan on the motherboard run all the time?

 

"smaller than the SATA connectors" Whoops, the connections are PATA. Sorry

 

Yes unless there is a temp. sensor somewhere [highly unlikely].

 

I am not worried about the power connector [the connector which has red,black & yellow wires]. I am worried about the data cable [the flat thing with about 2 dozen tiny cables & about 2 inches thick].

Check if a single data cable is connected to both your dvd drive & hard drive and then to your motherboard or you have 2 different data cables going from your motherboard into dvd & hard drive.

 

1 data cable

 

Get one more data cable & connect both DVD & hard drive individually.

You have earlier said that you were using 2 DVD drives. You must be having another cable there as its not possible to connect all the 3 drives using only one PATA cable.

 

I think I've killed it now. Before I shut it down yesterday I formatted a partition on the new drive so I could use it for data. My grandson had made a smaller partition for the operating system. When I fired it up this morning it needed to boot from the CD. I figured I had formatted the whole 500 GB instead. I put in the XP CD and it loaded all the drivers and then said there were no hard drives. WOW
We went from no DVD drives to no HDD's. I guess I should just use the new drive in an external case and give up on this old baby. You were right about there being more than 1 cable. It's so hard to follow them. Thanks for all your help. I certainly appreciated learning everything and getting all the drivers was fantastic. Sallie

 

This problem has been resolved! I turned this computer off a month ago and went on with my life. My printer has been sitting on the floor next to another computer all this time. Today I decided to take out the drive that had data on it and plug the computer in with just the 500 GB drive we had partitioned and installed XP on. Voila! It worked. All the drives showed up in disk management. We must have done something right all along. Anyway, I'm as happy as a clam and very grateful to all of you who helped me through this maze. Another win for Windows BBS. Thank you one and all!

Sallie

 

I 'm going to swap the connectors on 2 of the fans to test the fan on the motherboard. If the little fan is shot I understand I can replace it. I might even be able to put the side back on one of these days.

 

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Earlier I said that one of the fans was not working on my motherboard. I have an Abit KD7A motherboard and the chip set fan is not working. Can I replace it with any fan the same size or do I need to get one from Abit? Any help will be appreciated. Thank you, Sallie