Prob#1: I go into my BIOS and it doesn't necessarily say that I have a cdburner. You know how I can pick which drive it can read first or whatever? It only gives me options for cdroms and for my floppy. I have a dvdrom, cdburner, and floppy in so far. Is it some old motherboard problem?

Prob#2: Sometimes the dvdrom won't read cds. Went through the whole windows help session and my comp says all drivers work well blah blah...

Prob#3: Why is the sound on my computer so low? I have some old soundblaster 16pci or something in there. I've checked obviously the computer volume, but I have to turn it all the way up to hear things. I've tried all the "holes."

Prob#4: I've been trying to reformat my comp, but because of Prob#1 & 2 I can't get it to boot off the XP cd.

Any suggestions?

Question: With all these random problems, how will my computer take installing a second hard drive just for data? I would like to use the current one just for the OS.

lol, maybe you should find a good friend that knows what they are doing before you break something. bios is not for amatures.

Yeah, I know...which is why I'm asking for some help. I've done the whole bios thing before on my other comp, but since I don't really know any much more, I thought to ask here...

the bios cant tell whether a drive has burning capabilities or can read dvds, nor does it care. set it to cdrom, it should check both.

I tried that already. It didn't work. Is there just something wrong with my drives? I've played dvds successfully but cds are a different story. I don't get it, how come in the bios in my other computer, it could detect what type of drive had?

it all depends on how you have your drives setup.

your bios will probably only boot off of a master. (that is) an ide channel has both a master and a slave position. make sure that the one you are tryijng to boot off of is set as the master.

you will need to check the cable configurations of your drives. and jumper settings.

the capabilities of the drive (e.g. burner, dvd, etc) does not matter. set the one you want to boot off of as the secondary master and it should work. If that doesnt work, set your boot off of the primary slave.

if there are more problems, it may be with the hardware.

Thanks, I'll try that.

Anyone have an answer to prob#3?

could be that your speakers are not amplified and the sound card is not pumping enough juice through them.
One time I had some extra parts lying around and I fabbed up some car speakers to my computer. On full volume I could barely hear anything.

if the speakers don't have their own power source or volume control, they're probably not amplified.

Check the sound controll pannel in windows or your sound card software. Including the wave output. If you can't find what I'm talking about get someone who does to walk you through it on you computer. In most windows 9x installs, it will be in the tray.

hay im me when you get on next time, i might be able to help

Thanks everyone, I'll be sure to check everything then come back for more advice if there's no improvement to the situation...

I have a very similar sound card and I was having very similar problems. Make sure the correct driver is installed, one that supports XP. That was my biggest problem. Creative usually also supplies their own midification for windows volume. If you dont see their emblem somewhere in volume control, it probably hasn't been installed. Also, there is a jumper somewhere on the soundcard that enables the built-in amp to activate, make sure that is on the right pins.