DELL 8300 XP Pro Problems,

Does this happen with the lower hard drive disconnected?

 Thgat is what is so confusing. When I disconnect the lower hard drive it will not even boot up. I tried trading places and even the ribbon but to no avail.

An easy way out would be to replace the two IDE drives with a single SATA drive, like this $55 Western Digital Blue, and imaging over or reinstalling XP. 

Meanwhile, If you press F12 at bootup, do you get a boot menu with your two hard drives listed? 

Is the 80 GB drive listed first in the boot sequence in BIOS setup?

If BIOS is set to allow booting from USB, you might want to try changing that to "USB: No Boot".

Are both hard drives jumpered for "cable select"? Dell systems don't like drives that are jumpered as Master and Slave. The boot hard drive should be connected to the end connector on the IDE ribbon cable and the other HDD to the middle connector on that ribbon.

Neither drive is listed in bios

Both set to cable select

ribbon connectd as stated

?????????????

If neither drive is listed in BIOS, something is wrong...

Have you tried clearing BIOS?

1. Power off, unplug
2. Press/hold power button for ~15 sec
3. Open case and remove motherboard battery
4. Press/hold power button for ~30 sec
5. Reinstall battery*
6. See if it boots correctly now

*If motherboard battery is more than ~2-3 years old, this might be a good time for a new one. 3-volt CR2032 lithium ion battery, ~$2-$3 at discount stores.

will give it a shot tomorrow n ty

OK puit the new battery in and followed instructions when I rebooted at least it told me that the 80GB drive was Master n the 500 GB Drive was slave but it still reads the opposite of what they are D=OS , C= toys on big drive. I also tried undoing the 500 and it will not start up and that is a pain as I could take it out as I have the smaller USB drives that work just as good? Also reversed them and it took the 2 min but xp did start up. I would like to know what the heck is wrong as I am really confused as this box is still a good running machine...well it was till I tried putting Linux on the drive next to XP. That is all now gone so what next besides throwing it against the basement wall.:)

Sounds like Windows XP probably got assigned drive letter D: on 80GB drive when you installed Linux.

Follow the procedure here to reassign drive letter C: to the boot drive and D: to the 500 GB. You'll first have to assign the 500 GB (currently C:) to some new drive letter to free up C: and then assign the 500 GB to D: after you assign C: to the 80 GB. Read and follow the instructions carefully at that link. If you do it right, your 80 GB should become C: and the other drive D:.

Words of caution: you will be editing the Registry. Be sure to back up the entire Registry onto a USB stick before you make any changes to the Registry. And back up any personal files on the 80GB drive too. I take no responsibility if you fail to back up and then crash Windows.

If all else fails, you may have to disconnect the 500 GB drive, boot from your Dell Windows Reinstallation disk and do a clean install of XP on the 80 GB drive. Once XP is fully reinstalled with drivers, Service Pack(s),  updates and hotfixes, you can reconnect the other drive.

Keep in mind that Microsoft is no longer supporting XP, and there won't be any new security patches or other fixes for Windows or IE8. So you might want to consider upgrading to Win 7 instead of doing a clean install of XP. You will have to buy a valid license for Win 7 to run it on this system.

Ok that didn't work and blew the windows up so I took the 80 out n formatted the 500, I have all backed up no worries there, and did a clean install on it and it went nicely until I rebooted.

DELL 8300 Dimension

Bioa A07

Dell.com

Primary disk 1 not found to continue strike F1 or F2 to run setup.

New Csmos battery but will buy another just in case and have looked in bios and all seems fine so any suggestions would help.

I am tempted to hook up the 80 as it had it on it as well.

Is the 500 GB drive connected to the end connector on the ribbon cable? It should not be on the middle connector of that ribbon.

Is the 500 GB recognized in BIOS setup?

yes it is and now am back to no F1 and picking between windows XP or windows default. Is there a way I can eliminate this start up choices?

1. Manually set a System Restore point to be safe.
2. Click Start>Run
3. Type in: msconfig
4. Click OK
5. Click Boot tab and look for option to edit boot.ini.
6. Delete the one you don't want from the boot.ini, exit msconfig and reboot
7. That should solve the problem

:emotion-12:

1. Right-click My Computer, and then click Properties.

   -or-
   Click Start, click Run, type sysdm.cpl, and then click OK.
2. On the Advanced tab, click Settings under Startup and Recovery.
3. Under System Startup, click Edit. This opens the file in Notepad ready for editing.
4. In Notepad, click File on the Menu bar, and then click Save As.
5. Right click in an empty area of the Save As dialog box, point to New in the context menu, and then click Folder.
6. Type a name for the new folder, for example temp, and then press the ENTER key to create the folder named temp.
7. Double-click the new folder named temp, and then click the Save button to save a backup copy of the Boot.ini file.

Be sure to save the copy of boot.ini in a different folder than where it exists now, and remember where you put it.   Then post a copy of the boot.ini file you just saved here.