Primary IDE not working?

i just got a computer from a friend of mine, in fact its the one im on now. the secondary IDE works fine, but when i use the primary the bios shows something different then whats actually hooked up, im not sure whats wrong but i think it might be a motherboard problem, not real sure. any hard drive over 8gigs shows as only 8 gigs, a different model then what it is, and wont work for anything. it will just tell me to insert a system disk and press enter. anybody got any ideas? im hopin this is somethin that can be fixed so i can have a slave cdrom drive its kinda nice for copying cds..

You can try to change a couple of settings in the BIOS. Either restore defaults or set everything to auto detect.

Also, the position of the hard drives on the cable and the jumper settings can also make a difference.

been there, tried everything. i would pull the CMOS battery, but i cant get the *peach* thing out lol. do you think that would make a difference?

No, there is no reason to remove the battery. It sounds like the mother board is shot.

If you see weird symboled when trying to recognize an IDE through the bios, check your jumpers, check the order of Master, Slave, CS, etc.

http://www.elektrico.com/hdORDER.pdf

Hope this example helps.

i understand how to set my jumpers, but thanks.

also, don2007, if the motherboard was shot, then why would the secondary work fine?

I didn't say that all the circuits were shot in the mother board. It doesn't have to be that way. Anything can go bad by itself, USB, mouse, keyboard, etc....
Any one of those circuits in the mother board can go bad and not bother the others.

would it show any kind of distinction to show that its bad? and is there any way of fixing just this problem without buying a new motherboard

I'm just making diagnosis based on what we have discussed. There are ways to test the mother board but most of us don't have that equipment. Once they are gone, it's better to buy new instead of trying to repair it. Then it doesn't stop there. If you are going to buy a new mother board, you might as well get a bundled kit with a new processor and memory.