Weird motherboard problem

[Crackeday]

I have a strange problem. I have a new motherboard but can't get it to boot. It keeps saying "identifying IDE drives" then comes up with a question Mark. A friend tried his Sata drive and it boots. There's no os on my drives as I need the DVD drive to work to install.
I have cleared the CMOS but still nothing.
Any ideas? This one has me baffled.
I've set the DVD to master but still no joy, it does work but not on the mobo.

[Crackeday]

Thought I should add I have a Sata drive as well but no joy as no OS.

[Crackeday]

When I clear the cmos and disconnect the IDE drives, its still tries to identify IDE drives even though there not connected.
I have the latest bios on USb which quickly shows up when switched on but it jumps straight away to the IDE thing!!!
Its so frustrating. :(

[Niall Fernie]

Have you had a look at your settings in the bios?

It may be that the mobo finds the drives while your in the bios settings and then will be ok on reboot.

You may also have reset some basic setting to do with the finding of drives when you reset the cmos.

[EDDIE]

I have a strange problem. I have a new motherboard but can't get it to boot. It keeps saying "identifying IDE drives" then comes up with a question Mark. A friend tried his Sata drive and it boots. There's no os on my drives as I need the DVD drive to work to install.
I have cleared the CMOS but still nothing.
Any ideas? This one has me baffled.
I've set the DVD to master but still no joy, it does work but not on the mobo.

should the setup be puting the cable on the primary port on the mother board and using the end of the cable to put on the hard drive and set it to master and use the middle cable to put on the dvd drive and set as slave.
I though it mattered that the end of the cable was master and the middle was always set to slave?
If you go into the bios u should be able to change the boot up sequence?

[Crackeday]

Thx for replies.
The actual problem was the SATA drive which for some strange reason was stopping the IDE drives from booting, Its a strange one. Now got Windows installed no problem but had to put a linux partition on as the LAN wont work in windows 7, no loss really as I like Ubuntu anyway!!!