I just installed a second hard drive and before I could put in the set-up CD, my CD ROM disappeared. It IS listed in BIOS under boot section, but is not in device manager (although I think the driver may be listed). I have a zip drive connected to the same jumper and same thing has happened to it. The CD is set as master, zip as slave.

Before putting in the hard drive, I had
A: floppy
C: zip
D: CD
E: hard drive
Now, I have A: and E:
My new hard drive is showing up in device manager.

I am running XP.

Help...PLEASE

Hmm, is the new HD set as a slave as well?

If you disconnect the new HDD do things return to the way they were?

If when disconnected and the CDROM/Zip Pair on their Channel don't reappear make sure you check its cable and connections carefully; maybe even replace that cable. Possibly a power or data connection just came loose while you were fitting the second HDD.

It IS listed in BIOS under boot section would be normal even if no CD drive was attached; it refers to an option and not an actual device in that section of the bios. If is not listed under the IDE/ATAPI devices that is likely to be another matter though CD drives do not always appear listed in like manner to HDDs.

Are all your drives set to "Auto" ["Dynamically Auto-Detect and Configure"] in the BIOS Setup?
If they were all manually detected and configured in the BIOS setup at some time past, then only those will have their drive parameters correctly specified in the BIOS, and that is the info that is passed on to Windows.
Not sure exactly how it all works, but I can imagine Windows would become a little confused if the info it's given doesn't match the hardware connected.

Thank you all for your help. I'm still not sure what the problem was, I had quite an ordeal trying to pretend I'm a computer tech...for all of you having drive problems that are average computer people...DO NOT edit your registry! :p I managed to lock myself out of windows but had already formatted the new HD so I set it as first to boot, got back into windows, bought a new CD drive, and things work pretty well (except I need a registry repair now :eek: )

Thanks again for your responses.