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There is always a slight possibility that something was connected the wrong way and the easiest way is to try it with the case open. This way, if something starts smelling or there are sparks, there is still enough time to turn off the power before serious damage occurs. This is the most extreme scenario but I have seen it happen many times. Dust balls that came lose can shorten some connections or get stuck in some fans. In other words, just for checks, we are going to run the computer with the case open. Just make sure that there are no pets that want to help you, cats are mysteriously attracted to the inside of computer cases.

If everything works out well, that is, the computer boots up and the new drive shows up on the start-up screen, let it boot all the way into Windows and see whether the drive is also present in the "My Computer" menu. In Windows95, 98, NT or 2000, there is no need to load any drivers from a floppy disk that might have been supplied with the new drive, the interface is automatically configured.

Now it is time to close the case and to do something that almost everyone overlooks. After the case has been closed and reconnected to the power, boot up while holding the F8 key which gets back to the help screen. One option that will show up is:

#3 Safe Mode

Boot into safe mode which will get you to an ugly looking Windows screen telling you that this is for diagnostics purposes only. Click the "ok" box and Windows will be there in low resolution and 16 colors only. Click on the "Start" button and, in the pull-up menu, go to "Settings" and further to the "Control Panel". Within the "Control Panel" select the "System" icon which is usually the second last on the right hand bottom and go to the "Device Manager" which will show you all devices in your system. Click on the "+" icon next to the "CDROM" which will open up a submenu containing, most likely, a variety of CDROMs including the one you just installed.

Remove all of them including the new drive.

I have seen cases where up tp 30 drives were listed in safe mode and even though the drives were not physically present, they compete for system resources which can cause all kinds of conflict.

Close the device manager and restart your computer.

This entire procedure takes about 1/4 of the time that it took me to write this and about 1/2 the time it took you to read it

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