On the same IDE ribbon?

[sourced]

I was at my cousins house the other day when they asked if I could take a look at there computer, they had said it had a virus. I really don't consider myself to be a 'tech', but I agreed to see if I could help. When the boot screen flashed up I noticed that there CD-RW was the pri master and there HDD was the pri slave. I was like "WTF!?” I had always been told it's not good to have the HDD and CD/DVD on the same IDE. My question is; is this true, should I set the HDD as the pri master and move the CD-RW onto the same IDE and the DVD-ROM? Thanks in advance.

[Archer]

Its not a problem to have them on the same IDE channel and whilst its unusual for this set up to have the hard drive on the primary slave its probably set in the bios to boot from this first so causes no problem.
If they can get online then they can perform a free check using one of the major providers such as:
http://www.pcpitstop.com/antivirus/default.asp
http://security.symantec.com/sscv6/d...d=ie&venid=sym
http://housecall.antivirus.com/housecall/start_corp.asp