Problem after switching CD drive

[Furtwangler]

Figured I'd run this buy you guys, as far as I'm concerned atm the motherboard is fried and unfix-able but here we go.

Have a friends computer. His cd-rw/dvd-rom drive pooped itself, so I ordered a new one. No difference in drives besides the brand. I turned it off, pulled the power etc. Switched drives, powered back on and I get nothing. It turns on, fans run, no beep codes or the like, but no video signal. I noticed the floppy drive light is on constantly and its making noises like its looking for a disk. The monitor never switches to green light and acts like it has no signal. I switched the drive back to the old one and it still isn't working. I've stripped the board of all PCI cards, and everything, including all drives- still nothing.

Here's the really odd thing though, if I put on the CMOS memory jumper to reset passwords, it boots to the bios and lets me go through the bios menus. When I'm done doing what im doing it tells me to remove the jumper to go into normal mode etc. There is another setting with the same jumper according to the online manual that is to load a recovery floppy for the firmware but i have no such thing.

I don't have the model number or anything offhand, it was in a nextell computer and some researching is telling me Dell uses the same mobo for some of their cheaper builds. Any idea what couldve gone wrong? All I did to cause the problem was unscrewed two screws, swapped drives and replugged in the cables, properly. Jumpers were checked on the drives and whatnot, I'm sure it was installed properly.

[Spekkio]

try replacing the CMOS battery? in my experience, some boards get loopy if the battery is dead. in THEORY, it should just load up a default table of settings, shriek about the low battery, skew the clock by a mile as you use it, and run just fine. some barf when they have a dead battery. go spend 60 cents on a new battery and give it a go.

[Furtwangler]

battery is good. I work at a radioshack so we have a plethora of them. I took it out and let it sit too hoping maybe it would reset stuff.

[Spekkio]

make sure the mounting of the board is good. it's a longshot but i've seen (or at least i THINK. i never locked down the cause exactly, it just stopped) when a computer was built by $##%heads where the board was mounted in such a way that the mounting plate behind the motherboard grounded some of the solder joints on the back of the board. is it likely? no. not remotely. but if it's out of the case and disconnected from everything, at least you're reducing the problem space. can also check the board for blown caps or something.

[Furtwangler]

yea ive tried running it out of the case as well, that was the first thing I did was dis-reasembled it, but it still doesnt explain how only switching the cd drive caused it, it's so odd I think I'm just going to settle with changing the drive shorted the board somehow but im not too sure why lol