This really has me scratching my head...

I bought a new computer and wanted to transfer everything from my old one to the new one.
I unplugged my burner (power & 40 pin) and plugged the old hard drive in the drive bay - everything transferred across fine (from the old drive to the current primary drive) I unplugged the old drive and plugged the burner back in...

I reboot - (all my cmos settings are set to autodetect, they always have been) and now it doesnt detect any primary or secondary masters or slaves and wont boot at all! (Boot failure). I checked all the cables to make sure I didnt knock anything lose - everything is as it was before.

I Go into bios settings - nothing detected... I unplug the burner and the bios sees the primary drive?! The computer boots fine without the burner plugged in.

I haven't changed any jumper settings, everything is the same. Same ide cables, same bios settings, same jumper settings.

Any ideas anyone?

Make sure you have the IDE cable the right way round. The line (sometimes red) on the ribbon cable should usually be nearest the molex power connector. Also try another molex power connector in the burner, there should be one or two spare in there. Make sure you have not knocked any jumpers off the drive and check the IDE pins just to make sure you haven't bent any. Are the HDD and the burner on the same IDE channel? Make sure the IDE cables are seated in the MOBO correctly. Remove and refit to ensure a snug fit.

If all else fails, you may want to try setting the drives manually in the BIOS.

A list of component parts would be helpful if we are gonna solve this.

Try the burner in the new computer, that will tell you really quickly if its the connection of the burner

Der Meister I think the burner came with his new PC. I guess he could try the burner in his old PC.