No hdd start up?

[g0ra]

Resident noob is back.

Just put a different hard drive into my old system for my old man. Motherboard/graphics card information all loads up normal, but then the screen turns completely black with "F11 to recover" atop the screen, with a count down. If I press F11, or let the count run down, nothing happens and the screen stays black. HDD has Windows XP on it and some other shite.

Whats going on?

Note: I have 1 IDE cable: one end goes into the mobo and the other end (has 2 conncected) goes into both this HDD and an Optical drive - is that an issue? Does the IDE need to go into one component only?

Like so:

[Ybbon]

Not real sure on the cable, but was the mobo known to work before this and likewise the HDD?

[Top-Tier-Tech]

On an IDE cable 1 end will say "master". That is the one you want your HDD plugged into.

[Ishan]

Whats going on?

Note: I have 1 IDE cable: one end goes into the mobo and the other end (has 2 conncected) goes into both this HDD and an Optical drive - is that an issue? Does the IDE need to go into one component only?

You are sharing 2 hardware components via IDE cable they are PATA devices so you have to define master and slave for boot priority so that windows from the HDD gets picked up.
You will need a jumper for that to make the hard drive master. See the pic:-