blank screen

[equick]

Thanks for the replies. I have got a server I could plug into but it's new and I have a feeling it doesn't have IDE sockets, besides which I really dont want to break that as well! I'll give UBCD4WinV322 a go although I haven't used that before. What commands do I run to check/fix the hard disk?

Ed.

[equick]

After much frustration I took everything out of the case and started with the motherboard, ram. cpu and power. This morning it seemed like the old cpu was working after I plugged in the APX 12V connector but later on it reverted back to th previous problem and I got a blank screen.
I tested with the new cpu, and my old motherboard which worked, but when I tried booting up it kept complaining about the hard disk and wouldn't get past that eventhough I'd set the boot sequence to pick up the cdrom first.
In the end I popped down to PC World and bought a new SATA 500GB hard drive for £54 and finally my computer seems to be working again. It's just formatting the disk. I'm hoping once thats up and running I can use it to repair the old hard drive, and then I'll put my new drive in my server as I've been meaning to set RAID up on that.

I just wanted to ask, is it possible to run an IDE drive and SATA drive together?

Ed.

[Sputnik]

I just wanted to ask, is it possible to run an IDE drive and SATA drive together?

Ed.

Yes, you can run both. You will have to select the boot sequence in the BIOS.

[equick]

I can get it to boot off the sata drive but once logged into windows, it doesn't detect the IDE drive, although the BIOS does. Currently my IDE cable has the primary plug in the dvdrom, the slave plugged in the IDE hard drive, and the cable is plugged into the primary socket on the mobo. Do I need to change this, and do I need to change the jumper settings on the IDE hard drive?

[Sputnik]

you would need to make sure that the jumpers on the DVD and the HDD are set correctly. One as master and the other as a slave.

In windows have a look in disk management to see if the drive is listed there.

[Maccer101]

Yeah, look in disk management + on the safe side you could just disconnect the DVD from the IDE ribbon just while you are checking the HDD.

[equick]

I disconnected the dvdrom as you suggested and the IDE hard disk was found after that. I'm just running a chkdsk on it now, but can access all the data on it so that's great - thanks for all your help!

I'm a bit stuck on how to set up my disk and dvdrom with the IDE cable now.
The IDE cable has 3 plugs. The blue one goes into the mobo. The middle one is in the HDD and the end one was in the dvdrom. I read somewhere the end plug is the master so does that mean it should go in the HDD? If I do that, the middle plug wont reach to fit into the dvdrom though. Or do I just need to change the jumper settings on the dvdrom?

[equick]

Finally finished with this. Changed the jumper on the dvdrom to slave position, managed to get the master ide plug into the hard drive, and slave plug into the dvdrom. All done.

Thanks to everyone for their help here.

Ed.

[Maccer101]

Glad to here you sorted it out