For some reason, my optical drives will not function. Nothing was changed on my system, which really puzzles me. I tried uninstalling them in device manager with no success. Once while rebooting, I got an error message saying that they were not Atapi compatible, and to press F1 to continue. What's the deal here? Any advice/instructions are, as always, appreciated.

How about reistalling IDE controller drivers?

The cables are attached properly. I am going to try reinstalling the drivers for the IDE controllers.


OK...

Here's what I tried:

reinstalled IDE controllers/drivers
installed brand new IDE cable
performed system restore

Could the secondary IDE on my mobo be shot? It's only 4 months old, and I have not done anything to it since I bought it ( no cable changes/removals, no hardware changes).

I am going to try and hook up one of the optical drives to the primary IDE as a slave and see what happens.

You can hook up your HD to the second channel. If the controller is bust, the HD won't work either.

D'uhhh. I am just not thinking in the right frame of mind in handling this problem. I will give it a go.