Mbudden,

Thank you for using the Dell Community Forum.

Put the hard drive back in the 2300 and format and reinstall the operating system. You cannot format and reinstall the operating system on a hard drive from one system and put it in a different system.

alright thank you. but i mean i have nothing on the drive from the 2300 its completely fresh like its brand new nothing on it. i put it back in and it only tells me it cant find a boot device.

Mbudden

You need to install the hard drive, into the D-2300, make the CD/ROM the first boot device and boot from the XP reinstallation CD.

This guide may help.

Prior to installing, remember to disconnect all external peripherals from the computer, except the keyboard, monitor and mouse.

Delete all existing partitions, when you are prompted, then recreate and format them.

You will have to reload the drivers and applications, etc, starting with the chipset driver, then the video driver, followed by the other drivers.

Bev.






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well i got to that but the problem is that, it wont notice both my CD-ROM and DVD-ROM drives. on the IDE Config. option under Advanced, IDE Secondary Master and Slave options both are blank it doesnt say NONE as the IDE Primary Slave is shown. does the BIOS have to find the Drives? or something?

Mbudden

Check the cables to the optical drives are correctly plugged in.

Are the jumpers set to "Cable Select"?

Are the optical drives recognized in the setup [BIOS]?

If not, try replacing the IDE data cable.

The optical drive you set to boot from, is the master, this is the drive connected to the end cable connector.

Bev.







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Post the issue in the appropriate Board, where they will be answered.

yes. they are plugged in correctly. and yes the jumpers on the optical drives are set to cable select and so is the hard drive (factory set i didnt wanna mess with it) but no both optical drives are not. when i move the IDE cord for the optical drives into the HDD IDE spot it shows and when i put the HDD in the optical drive spot nothing is shown as i metioned earlier. i have replaced the IDE cable with the 2400's since they are identical. and about the end cable connector. the end one is my DVD-ROM drive.






thats to give you a look into what i am talking about.
the top optical drive is Drive 0 DVD-ROM
next is Drive 1 CD-ROM
and then Floppy.

Message Edited by Mbudden on 04-07-2007 04:55 PM

Mbudden

Try Clearing the NVRAM.

Bev.





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Post the issue in the appropriate Board, where they will be answered.

bev,

i did what it had to say.
and it still doesnt show up
it gives me what i have showed.
here is a pic of what happens when i plug in the Optical drive cord into the HDD spot.



thats what is said when i switch it to the HDD IDE port. and vise virsa happens if i switch it back as shown above in last post.



this is very wierd and i dont get it. maybe something is wrong with the IDE port on the motherboard?

Message Edited by Mbudden on 04-07-2007 06:53 PM