after I changed the CDRW not even the floppy was there. the bios doesn't detect the HDD, i fixed that from the bios now.
I unplugged both the cd driver power and IDE cables from both the cd-rom and cd-rw and still the HDD not recognized.
i loaded all the fail safe defaults of the bios. still doesn't work.
one thing I forgot is that I get a message that says something like: "..., please insert a disk and press any key". (there's nothing in a: drive, don't ask that)
Jumpers are:
HDD ide1 master
cd-r master ide2
cd-rw slave ide2
I have maxtor 40gb 5400 rpm.
thank you for all your help.