As you have been altering jumpers, check you have them in the right place and that the ribbon cable is good and connected properly.
Try also setting the jumpers back to master.
If none of this works, I think the drive is suspect.

 

thank you for the quick response albert. The ribbon cable is brand new but as to whether it is seated properly or not i will have to check that.
Sorry for my questioning but when you say the you think the drive is suspect if non of what you have stated to try works out, do you mean that the drive may be bad and as such needs to be replaced, because as stated above, while the hard drive has remained in the system, the motherboard, processor and memory have been changed.

 

That drive should be detected by the new board without problem. You will have to reinstall or repair your OS if XP or Vista.
I have had drives give up just because they were disturbed.
Your problem sounds like a settings issue - you could try the drive outside the box with the old board if it is still working.
If you cannot get the BIOS to see the drive after these checks, it is probably dead.

 

the other motherboard is completely dead. i will try a repair first because it is XP that is on the system. Also the printer that the computer is attached to is not receiving data properly and after installing drivers from the website (hp) it still does not print properly. I have asked the person to locate the system disk and try to re-install the printer to see if that solves the problem but that has yet to be done.
But for now they seem contempt with just being able to do their work without losing anything, but i said i would try to see if it is possible to elminate the problem of having to restart the machine before it detects the hard drive in bios.

P.S thanks for the help thus far much appreciated :grinthumb

 

If the drive is dying, I recommend you do a backup before too long. Also, as you can access the drive after some difficulty, once you have done the backup you could try running some drive tests on it. You can find some Maxtor testing software on the maxtor/seagate website.

 

kk i will do all the things you have suggested once i have gotten a hold of the computer again.