Ok turns out there were two different IDE cables on the same thing from the mobo. Well I knew that anyway really, but one wouldnt stretch far enough so didnt bother to try it out. But just discovered that in fairly small writing on the underside it says (the one that was in before) HD1 and the one which is in now says ZIP and HD2. Although I have now corrected the IDE cable it is still not recognized yet, although Il fiddle with a few things and see what happens, Il keep you posted.

Worse case scenario, check your BIOS settings. When I put my internal in, that is what I had to do to get it to be recognized.

Good Luck.

Ok its still not working, tried with heaps of different jumperings. Went into the BIOS and looked for the second IDE drive being disabled. Didnt see any sign of it. I did notice a thing called "OS install" or "OS install mode" That was switched to off. Dunno if that has anything to do with it?

DONT PLAY WITH YOUR BIOS!!!

if you dont know what youre doing you can permanently screw your motherboard (ie, you have to buy a new motherboard).

If it comes down to a bios problem (which is extremely dubious) go to a qualified computer tech.

have you tried windowsupdate.microsoft.com to look for microsoft drivers that may have been made? its worth a try.

dont worry man, I have some knowledge of the BIOS (for OC'ing purposes etc.) I dont intend to "play" with it anyway. Il try the windows update thing but Im not convinced itl do anything. Thanks anyway.

Have you tried plugging a known good drive into the cable to see if it is recognizied? It could be a problem with IDE slot on the motherboard.

Have you tried testing the Zip drive in another PC, again using an IDE bus that you know works?

This will help to isolate the problem.

Il try another IDE cable and tell you what happens. I know that it works though, as it used to be in another PC until a couple of days ago.

YES!!!! got it fixed. The computer does actually have cable select, so I tried putting it in both the free IDE ports (the middle one and the top one) and still no joy. So, after trying everything I could think of I decided that I was pissed of enough to justify a call to tech support. Now after about 20minutes onto them (damn foreigners, no offense intended to anyone out there, but you know what its like when you get someone who cant understand you properly) This is what I was told, and did, AND IT WORKED! I left it in the top IDE connection since that is the main one since it isnt used because I have SATA HDDs, and went into BIOS, I then pressed Alt+E and then Alt+F alternately 5 times and rebooted, then everything worked, it was installed without me having to do anything, and was in the device manager and had a letter name etc.

So my question out of all of this is: what the hell does Alt+E and Alt+F alternately for 5 times do? (Well I suppose I know what it did on this occasion but what does it do in general, if you get my drift :D )

Oh and btw thanks for all the suggestions etc.