IDE Primary Channel in Bios but no drives found

[DavidE]

I have a Dell Dimension 9100 (my first mistake-lol) and when the bios comes up the DVD drives (I have two) are found but when the machine fully boots up. No drives are listed (my computer/explore) and in device manager there is a ! point on the Primary IDE. I have tried uninstalling it and going into regedit to remove upper and lower filters for the drives. I think it is a driver issue but I cannot reinstall windows because the drives won't work. Any ideas? I have been jacking with this for three days and think maybe the MOBO is bad? My HD's are SATA and work fine. Just no dvd drives. They won't even boot from a bootable disc. Thanks for any ideas in advance

[TopFarmer]

I would say one of the cd drives is bad. Try one at a time (be sure to set the jumper correct ie: Master/cable select. If one is on the primary IDE along with the hdd , remove that one, be sure to check jumper on hdd.