HD install leads to dead computer

[Negative_Pulse]

I was doing a cpu/ram/hd upgrade on a friends computer. The cpu and ram install went great and the comp recognized the parts no problem. Then i went to install the new hd my friend had, and thats where the problems began.

The setup in the comp was Primary IDE cable attached to dvd and cd-r drives, he had one other cable in his comp, plugged into the Promise IDE1 slot. Since the hd he bought didnt come with a cable i figured i would just connect the new hd to the middle connection on the ribbon cable. I set the old hd as master and the new one as slave too.

Upon booting up the comp just died after a couple seconds, i tinkered with the jumpers a bit, but all that resulted in was the comp starting up, and the dvd + cd-r drive both going crazy, making allot of noise (there was no screen, couldnt even get into the bois).

At one point i was able to just unplug the new hd, and have the comp running like it did before. But after i tried again to have the comp boot with both drives on the same ribbon, and failing again, the comp wont even work like it did before now (jumper settings set the way they were prior and the new hd unplugged).

The system is totally hosed now, and i dont have a clue what i did wrong.

Tomorrow im going out with him to buy another ribbon cable, i will try plugging the new ribbon into Promise IDE2 slot, thus giving each drive their own ribbon. But it still makes no sense that the comp wouldnt work when i reverted everything to prior adding the new hd.

some system info
mobo: asus, via kt266a chipset
old hd: 40gig wd
new hd: 80gig wd 8mb buffer

 

[Nodsu]

With ATA66 cables it matters which connector you use for the slave and which for master.

You should put the boot HD on the primary IDE channel, CDROM(s) on the secondary and leave the RAID controller for all the extra stuff.

Have you tried booting the computer with no CD/DVD ROM drives attached? Perhaps the power supply doesn't have the juice to power up all those drives at once.

 

[Negative_Pulse]

UPDATE

So i was back at my friends house again tonight trying to fix the problem and he had bought another ata66 ribbon.

I tried a few things but the comp wouldnt even post. This led me to believe either the vid card/ram or mobo was fried. I pulled out the newly added stick of ram and BOOM. Everything worked.

I kept the dvd/cd-r drives on their original ribbon, chained together and plugged into Primary IDE. As for the HD's, i really didnt want them chained on the same ribbon. And chaining a hd and optical drive on the same ribbon was impossible because the location of the hd cage and optical drives. So i used the newly bought ribbon and gave each hd their own ribbon, plugging the ribbons into the two Promise raid controler slots.

Everything worked great and it was all running fine after d/l the wd util to format and install the drive. Both the drives showed up properly in device manager and everybody was happy, especially me.

As for the ram stick, i told him to scrap it (he got the stick for free anyways), take it to a comp store and get it tested because i was'nt going to touch it anymore. Somehow the ram was recognize by the bois and looked as if it was ok for the first minute, and then just shot the whole system to hell.