Computer won't recognize the master...... Help Please

I need some serious help please.... on my mom's puter it won't recognize or detect the master or the slave ... not even really sure what that means but as far as I know it's the hard drive .... well this is how it started.... My sister unhooked the old cd drive and put in one that has a cd burner...when she did this she hooked the wires up wrong ...but fixed it later .... but now we were able to get on a couple times and then it froze and now it won't detect the master.... could someone please tell me what I can do to fix this for her.... I know very little about what I am doing so if you could put it to me so I know what to do I would appreciate that ... thanks for your time... Bunny

 

the one with the operating system should me set to either master and the slave drive set to slave (in some systems they should both be set to cable select).

Could you please explain that sentence.... otherwise I understood....

I really appreciate your help today.

 

If all your sister did was install a CD drive then your Hard Drive(s) should not be involved. Your CD drives are also called master and slave. Like TimW said the master goes on the end of the cable and the slave goes on the middle connection.

Some computers are able to determine the master or slave automatically by their position on the cable. In these systems you set the jumpers on both CD drives to cable select and the computer makes the one on the end master and the other slave. [If your comp has cable select the CD drive you removed should have it's jumpers set to cable select] if so you should probably use this setting.

If your system doesn't have cable select capabilities you manually set the jumpers on one drive to master and the other drive to slave.

In both case you have to put the master on the end and the slave in the middle.

It sounds like you just removed the old drive and put a new one in. So since you will be using only one CD drive you should set it to master and put it on the end of the cable leaving the middle connection empty.

 

You could have the connector on backwards on the master. It can be done with some ribbon cables. I know, because I have done it before.

 

For optimum performance only the hard drive should be connected on the primary channel IDE cable as master and only an optical drive should be connected on the secondary channel IDE cable as master. The hard drive jumper should be set to master and single drive/no slave.

In reality many people have more than two drives so it is necessary to share. And some computers have SATA or SCSI or more than two IDE channels. In which case it gets a bit more complicated.

If you only have a single IDE cable, set the hard drive to master and the optical drive to slave. The hard drive jumper needs to be set as a master with a slave drive present. Jumper settings do vary with different brands/models.

On the IDE cables, the master connection is the connector at the end of the cable and secondary is the middle. This will ensure that any drives configured as Cable Select are detected properly but does not really matter if you have the jumpers in other positions.