I have an HP XT-983. I have the CD-Writer that came standard on it. I have tried to put another drive in the second space as the slave. When I do that it takes away the CD-RW or my second hard drive. I do not know what to do. Someone please help me. Thanks.

You check to make sure you have the jumpers (usually on the back side of the device) set as a slave and make sure you have it set that way in the BIOS too?

That's all I can think of...unless you have a PCI Video Card and it is conflicting with the PCI Bridge on the computer.

I have already changed the jumpers and I do not have anything in any of the PCI slots at the current time.

1 - Check your Bios extensivly to make sure it is configured properly.

2) Run the Add Hardware Wizard in Windows and see if it picks your drives back up. IT's possible they got "lost" when you installed the new drive.

3) Recheck your Jumpers again.

4) Check with HP and make sure that your Motherboard supports mutliple drives per IDE chain. Its been a long time since I have seen one that would only support one, but it HAS been known to happen.

5) Try swapping the Master/Slave relationship on the two drives using the Jumpers.

6) If it picks both drives up in your Bios but not in Windows then try to update the driver for your IDE controller.

7) Make sure you have the IDE and power cables to the drives seated correctly and that both drives spin up when you power on.

8) Be innovative.

Check none of your CD drives are set to CS (Cable Select)
Set your reader to MA (Master) and your recorder to SL (Slave in your jumper settings.
Connect IDE cable from your CD's to your secobdary IDE port on your drive (It will next to your primary HDD cable).

Go to your bios and set it to auto detect secondary master and slave devices.

BTW when plugging the IDE cables to your CD's.
make sure red stripe looks at the power connector... And it looks the same way your primary IDE cable looks on your MOBO which is Pin 1 in other saying.