hi

the other day i reformated my hard drive and reinstalled xp and everyhitng

so i booted up and everything is fine

and then one day when i booted up, it did not recognise my cd drive or my 2nd hard drive (the main one is working)

In my computer/windows explorer/disk management it dosent show up and if i put a cd in nothing happens.

When I re installed xp i had to fiddle with the BIOS to set it to BOOT from the cd drive, so i may of FIDDLED with the setting somewhere but im not sure.

It cant be not plugged in or anything like that because it was working before

what can i do?

I have tried add new hardware wizard but i didnt get anywhere.... what options should i do in this?alexcooldude......How about repairing the font selection your using .....your pc probably doesn't like it .

dl65 whats that got to do with the drive?alexcooldude....It has nothing to do with your issues but that font is very hard on the eyes...
Now that you have changed your font colour to RED it's much easier to read. So moving on ......when you formatted ,what O/S were you using .......You said you have installed XP . Now , your second hard drive isn't being seen by XP......were you inside the CASE ? and something is loose ie...... 2nd hard drive IDE cable or the 4 pin power connection .....You SAY the cd rom isnt being seen either.....When you did the clean format .......what kind of a boot disk did you use to restart your p/c. Almost sounds like there are no cd drivers......but then if that were true how did you install XP . Then you said you had to fiddle with the bios.....explain.
When you are in bios.....do you see the hard drives as Primary master ...and Primary slave.....and your cd rom as Secondary master ?

Check these settings and let us know .

dl65  i had xp previousely and i wiped the disk and re installed xp

I havent done anything inside the case at all

when i booted i set it to boot from cd, and i inserted the windows xp disk into the drive and formatet it and all through thta

when i was fiddline with the bios ths was to get it to boot from cd

i was wondering about whats in the primary/secondary slave and all that - i dont know i didnt install them - is there anyway to tell?go back in the bios and chose setup defaults option...save and exit...windows should then detect you hardware...if you are going to fiddle with the bios write the settings down or print the bios screen?alexcooldude......The primary/Secondary thing.....
If you look on the motherboard.....you will see 2 ide sockets ( thats where the wide ribbon cables "IDE" plug in . and go up and connect to ...the hard drive(s) and the cd drive(s) . One of the sockets will be marked Primary and the other marked Secondary. The primary ide cable should be used for the hard drive(s) and the secondary used for cd-drive(s) There is usually a marker stripe (either red or black) on the ide ribbon to denote pin #1.......Note .....some ide cables are made without a feature on the plug to prevent it from being inserted backwards , hence the marker stripe. There are also three plugs on the ide cable ....one at each end and one in the middle.So if you have only one hard drive ...you would use the plug on the end to plug into the drive.....(and this drive should be set as the MASTER) and if you have a second hard drive installed......it should be plugged into the middle plug on the same ide cable as the 1st hard drive and set as SLAVE .   You follow the same procedure for the cd drives.
Now then go into the bios......and find the screen which shows the info on the installed  ( recognised ) drives.
What you should see is .....Primary master ........that drives name... ie ibm...... or western digital .....or whateverever
then Primary slave and the info on that drive .
Secondary Master .......cd drive info
Secondary Slave ........info on drive if installed.

If you believe you may have screwed up the settings when you were there before look down at the bottom and look for something like page defaults or set defaults and press that key ......follow the instructions and exit.....
The normal boot sequence should be ....Foppy drive, CD-rom and then hard drive .....of course you can change these to whatever you wish..
Review this and let us know.
dl65