Hi
I am trying to intsall a sata dvdrw on a asus p5s800-vm/s motherboard. When i connect it to the motherboard and restart the pc, it gets as far as detecting ide primary master then stops. After a minute I get the Bios Setup utility screen. The old dvdrw was an ide setup connected to ide 1 primary. Ive checked the bios settings and they seem ok. Anyone come across this before?? I have reseated all connections and tried another power source. The dvdrw drive has power and i can open the cd drawer. My hard drive is connected on ide0 primary and I am able to boot to xp if I remove sata cable connection. As soon as I reconnect the cable, the pc will allways boot to the bios setup screen.

Is the SATA optical drive properly identified in the startup screens?

If so, you may need to install SATA drivers for your motherboard. Sounds like this is the first SATA device installed in this rig. I believe that all that should be required is to disconnect the SATA optical and boot into windows. Then install the SATA drivers. Shutdown and reconnect the SATA optical drive and you should be good to go.

One other item of note. If the SATA optical is NOT properly identified in the startup screens you may not have the SATA controller/s Enabled in the BIOS.

You can download the SATA drivers from the motherboard site.

All this assumes you had a working system and simply are changing the optical drive. If this is not the case then clarify the issue.

Most motherboards that have SATA controllers have some SATA data cable headers a drive can be connected to from which the drive can be booted from (the drive is seen as master), and some SATA headers a drive can be connected to from which the drive can NOT be booted from (the drive is seen as slave). Sometimes the two types of headers are different colors, sometimes they are not. If you want to be able to boot from a bootable CD (or DVD) in the SATA burner drive, it must be connected to a header from which it can be booted. See your mboard manual.

Make sure the controller/drive connections in the bios Setup are set to Auto detect by the method Auto.

Fairly recent bioses often default to booting from a SATA drive first if one is connected, and the bios will change the boot order on it's own if one was not connected previously, even if you have just a SATA optical drive connected and no SATA hard drive. After you have connected the SATA optical drive, go into your bios Setup and make sure the boot order is correct for your situation.
E.g. floppy drive or removable drive, then the SATA burner drive if that's the one you want to be able to boot a bootable CD from, then the hard drive you want to be able to boot from.
If you have more than one hard drive, make sure it's the IDE hard drive you want to boot from that is the one it boots from.
There may be a separate list of hard drive models in that case, or a list to choose from listed according to how they are connected - e.g. hdd0, hdd1, or similar.
Some bioses will not try the other hard drives listed (or optical drives listed) to see if they are bootable, if you have more than one and if the first one is not bootable, and some bioses will only boot a bootable CD in the first optical drive listed in any case if you have more than one.
.....

The SATA data cable has a bump or slight projection on one side of the outside of it's end connector that is supposed to "latch" it into the SATA header socket on the mboard and on the drive. That bump or projection is, unfortunately, easy to damage or even break off. Make sure that the cable end "latches" into the socket on both ends - the data cable should not move or come out if you merely brush your hand against it.
If it does not "latch", even mere vibration can make it come out of it's socket enough to cause problems - tape it in place, or use another data cable that does "latch", if it does not "latch".
Similar applies to the SATA power cable end connector and its socket on the drive.

The motherboard's bios will detect the SATA burner drive if it is connected properly without you needing to load drivers first if the SATA controllers are enabled in the bios Setup, which is usually the case by default - the motherboard and it's bios, itself, does not need drivers for that - but your operating system will not be able to recognize the SATA burner drive if SATA controller drivers have not been loaded in Windows, if the bios Setup does not have the SATA controllers/SATA drive detection in IDE compatible mode or similar.
In that case, your mboard would boot normally, if the boot order settings were correct, and Windows would load normally, but you would not be able to see the SATA burner drive in Windows, until you load the drivers for the SATA controllers in Windows.