BleepingComputer.com: Installing A Dvd Burner...

Ok, on the computer im putting together, it has windows XP pro, 512 mb of ram, a basic cd drive, all the regular stuff. This is my first time attempting something like this, and I dont know many of the technical terms. What i do know, is I have a bunch of old computers that people gave to me, and I have the one that has some potential (the one im working on). I took a DVD player/burner out of one of the other computers, and tried plugging it into the one im working on. All the plugs fit, but when i turn the computer on it doesnt load to the windows XP page, it stops on a black page, with a bunch of words on it, and it says something like system error please insert boot disk...if you need the exact message i can put the dvd player back in and start it up to get the message..I was just hoping someone might no what to do before i have to put it back in. The slot Im plugging the dvd player in is between the slot for the floppy disk drive, and the CD drive, right in the middle, and it goes straight to the dvd player.

There should be three IDE ports Primary IDE, Secondary IDE, and floppy. Your HDD should be on primary IDE your cd rom drive should be on Secondary IDE. You will want to connect the DVD player/burner on the Secondary IDE you will need to configure the jumpers on the drives. One drive needs to be set to primary and the other drive needs to be set to slave. If you are only connecting the new drive and replacing the existing drive make sure the jumper is set to master. Make sure there are no disc's in the drives and reboot the computer. If you are still having problems reboot again and enter the bios menu. When your in the bios menu you want too look for the boot device priority and set your HDD as the primary boot device. If you can get the computer to boot with the new drive check and see if it is functioning properly. The drive might be bad.

Ok, how do you know wich one the primary, secondary, and floppy one are? The CD drive goes from the drive, to the HD to the board. I plan on leaving that one in and the DVD burner is going right underneith that. I tried connecting it straight from the DVD burner to the board. I also tried going from the CD drive, straight to board, and from DVD to HD to board. But i may have had the primary and secondary ones mixed up because I'm not sure wich is wich. Also, If I unplug my HD from the board, or anything else am I going to have to reinstall the HD, or re-register my copy of windows? this computer was given to me so i have no disks, or numbers.

Well your HDD will be connected to the Primary IDE port, but the different channels should be listed on the board. For performance reasons your CD rom and your HDD should be on different channels Since it works already in the current configuration (aside from the DVD rom drive) lets leave that alone. The ribbon cable that you are using to connect the DVD rom drive to the motherboard is it keyed? If its not you may be plugging the cable in upside down which would cause the problem you are describing you want the red or blue stripe on the same side as the power connector. You wont be able to get the cable backwards when connecting to the motherboard since the motherboard has the 19th pin removed to prevent this. You will need however to double check the way the cable is plugged into the drive. As I mentioned above since you are using the DVD rom on its own cable make sure the jumpers are set to MASTER. If you want to change the orientation of the drives later after you get the DVD rom working you should put both the cd rom and dvd rom drive on the same channel opposite of the HDD (the secondary IDE) this will increase performance when reading from the cd and writing to the HDD and also burning CD's from the HDD. Make the Burner drive the primary and the non burner the secondary. The MASTER goes at the end of the cable and the slave goes on the middle connector.

Edit: The floppy connector is the smaller of the 3 a HDD or CDRom drive cable wont plug fit into that channel. If you disconnect the HDD properly you wont loose any information just be sure to connect it back to the same place. If you connect it to a different channel or change its master/slave you could change the drive letter assignment and cause problems with windows. You mentioned you didnt have any windows CDs or registration numbers. The computer should have a windows sticker on the case you can also look up the information for windows using SIW.

Reference :Link

Here is a tutorial with pictures for installing a ATA hdd. The same information regarding the IDE master and slave locations is correct for both hdds and optical drives.

I made a mistake in my previous post. There are only 2 IDE slots on a MB the FDD is a differnt type and is on a different controller.

Thanks for all your help so far, I havent been able to try any of the recent fixes you guys gave, my dad just went into the hospital and ive been away from home and will be again soon for a few days, but as soon as i get the next chance I will try them and see what works, I will let you all know what happens, please keep this post open until then, thanks so much!

Hope everything turns out ok with your dad. Don't worry about the post it will be here when you get back.

It's been a while since I was able to mess around with the computer, but I took the dvd burner out and tried what you said, I actually had to set the dvd burner as slave and not master. It recognizes the dvd player being in my computer as a drive now...but when I put a dvd in to test it it gave me the choices of how to open it and I tried to play the dvd, and it said it couldnt play because I needed a video codec. Any ideas on where to start? should I try downloading codecs now? if so wich ones are the ones to look for?

Start with the third and fourth offering
http://www.microsoft.com/download

I tried the third and fourth. The third one (decoder checkup) didn't find anything. I downloaded and installed the fourth one but it didnt do anything for me. The message I get when I try to play a DVD is "Windows Media Player cannot play this DVD because a compatible DVD decoder is not installed on your computer" ...But you probably already knew that. I'm on a different computer right now, and it has Cyberlink (powerDVD) installed...apparently thats what this computer uses. I tried copying and pasting the folder from this computer to the one im having the problem with but it didnt do any good. Any other ideas?

Browse through this thread. There's recommendations for different free codec packs in there
http://www.bleepingcomputer.com/forums/topic3616.html

ok..so then, are a dvd decoder and a codec the same thing?

spiffiestpenguin, on Feb 14 2008, 02:51 PM, said:

if you are talking about playing a commercial dvd like a movie then yes they are the same, those dvd's have a CSS protection and you have to install something to unscramble them for playback

this is technically not a video codec

most drives come with something like powerdvd or windvd, which installs the decoder so other programs can play the disk

oh ok. well, that link I got before has a lot of good stuff and will deffinatly be helpful...unfortunatly the only one I see that offers codec packs and a way to find the codec's I might need is the one called AVIcodec....but I'm kinda worried about downloading it, because when I click the link there is this message on the page "Warning ! I am not the author of AVI Codec Pack, which contains a trojan spyware !" I'll keep looking though