TIVO/instantcake/dell 4600, cant read cddrive on primary slave- HELP!

[a23element]

wow, been at this for an entire day... eventually went with purchasing instantcake- and now this doesn't work either- help!

software- instantcake
hardware- dell 4600
sony cd-rw drive
wd 160gb drive (restored another image onto drive prior to instantcake- do i need to do anything with this?)
os- xp home

bought the instantcake software because my TiVo hard drive crashed and needed a new image of the sony svr2000

my cddrive and new hard drive are fine- disconnected everything else on the ide cables

per instantcake's instructions, moved the cddrive from secondary master to primary slave and set the jumpers to slave and new hard drive to secondary master- but the bios doesn't recognize the cd drive so i'm unable to run the instantcake software that i burned to a cd after the download

since instantcake requires this configuration because of its automated scripts (cd on primary slave and new drive on secondary master), i'm kind've stuck here at this point

also tried the following to test cables/jumpers:
changing jumpers on cd drive to cable select (bios doesn't read drive)
moving cd drive to primary master (bios doesn't read drive)

primary ide cable is fine- works with the original and new hard drives

bios recognizes the cd drive on secondary master, so the drives are fine

any help would be much appreciated

don't know much about linux- so detailed instructions would be great (read a previous post about using the image from the cd and restoring using the hinsdale instructions- but i'm a bit leary of attempting to do so)

thanks!
-kristy

[andrew12901]

Make sure that the boot sequence is set accordingly to your setup, i.e cdrw first. If that still doesnt work, maybe use the manual selection by pressing F12 at startup? Sorry, thats all I can think of other than to make sure that the bios has all ide channels turned on to automatic...

Andrew

[a23element]

thanks for the reply-

it's not actually reading my cd drive at all when in the primary slave, so i can't boot from the cd... :(

[IminMs]

Put the CD drive as Master on the Primary plug. The Tivo Drive set as Slave on the Secondary Plug.

[a23element]

will that work with the instantcake scripts if i place the cddrive in the primary master and the hard drive in the secondary slave?

the scripts are very explicit in stating that the cd drive needs to be on the primary slave and the hard drive on the secondary master/slave.

[krypdo]

You need a spare harddrive to put on the primary master. The instruction recommends we disconnect everything else but my dell 4550 wouldn't recognize the cd rom on primary slave unless there's something on the primary master. F12 at startup will bring up the boot selection list and the "IDE cd rom" option should be there.

Good luck.

[a23element]

hey krypdo-

thanks!!! installed a locked hard drive into the primary master - and then everything went smoothly afterwards!

whew :)