Help! XP can't find hardware devices on 2nd IDE

[slnorth]

I moved my 2 DVD drive further up on my case and unplugged the cables to do so. After booting up the drives are missing. Hardware device manager had this to say plextor 712a and the HP 200I.

"Windows successfully loaded the device driver for this hardware but cannot find the hardware device. (Code 41)

Click Troubleshoot to start the troubleshooter for this device."

There was also an error msg when booting up that the dvice couldn't be fount. I deleted my plextor software and the message stopped. However XP couldn't find the dvd drives on the primary IDE.

I tried :

* different cables
* 4 other cd/dvd drives
* all all of them work in other computers
* the drives on the primary IDE worked when switched to the secondary slot
* when hooking the DVD drive as slave to the prmary ide/main hard drive the system didn't see the dvd drive.

I'm still stuck after several days of trial and error and searching.

If anyone has an answer or suggestion, please chime in.

Thanks

[pfh]

Did you try getting them recognized in BIOS 1st?
Sometimes you have to get the BIOS to recognize them 1st then save/exit/reboot.