My mobo has 8 SATA connectors and 1 IDE connector. I connected my hard drive to the IDE and added a Promise Ultra ATA 100 which is a IDE to PCI connector card to connect my cd drives to. The problem is that when booting my computer it will hang while it DETECTS my cd drives and I have to reset the computer 2-3 times just to get it to work and go into windows, I have to do this all the TIME and its driving me crazy. However, after it boots to windows EVERYTHING works fine like it's supposed to.

It's a custom built computer

Gigabyte GA-EP35-DS3R mobo
2 Gb Corsair RAM
Intel Pentium 4 2.66Ghz HT
250GB HDD
2 hp dvd writers
nVidia Geforce 7300GT 512Mb PCI-e


What is going one here?Allow me to display my ignorance, which may be BLINDING!

It's been a long time since I've used a PCI based IDE controller card. Does the BIOS allow for primary / secondary IDE channels? Might there be a conflict between the IDE devices?

Try to squint through the glare... Which Promise card ? ?
Have you installed the drivers for it ? ?
It may be best to use the onboard IDE for the optical drives until you get this sorted...
Im not too sure about the card, all I know is that its a
Promise Ultra 100 ATA IDE Controller Card.

I think windows installed drivers for it. The drives work fine after going into windows.

The reason I'm not using onboard IDE is because there is only 1 and I have my hard drive connected to it. Then I have my 2 cd drives connected through the IDE controller card.The Windows drivers may not be sufficient to run the card...DLoad and install the correct drivers from Here.

If the performance is still unsatisfactory let us know.