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Dell Dimension 4600 Bios A06
I have a Dell Dimension 4600 with the Bios A06. A little while ago the hard drive went bad. It had a couple bad sectors and so I removed it. When I put another hard drive in that was completely blank because it was formatted, it said that it couldn't find the diskette drive 0 or the SATA Primary dirve 0 and Primary drive 1. Here is the whole error message.
Phoenix ROM BIOS PLUS Version 1.10 A06
Copyright 1985-1988 Phoenix Technologies Ltd.
Copyright 1990-2003 Dell Computer Corporation
All Rights Reserved
Dell System Dimension 4600 Series
Bios Version A06
Diskette drive 0 seek failure
SATA Primary drive 0 not found
Primary drive 1 not found
Strike the F1 key to continue, F2 to run the setup utility
Can anyone tell me what this means?
jackshack
6.4K Posts
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March 28th, 2012 23:00
Try starting Windows in Safe Mode; the timing is a bit critical as you have only about two seconds between the completion of the self test and the starting of Windows to press F8. That will take you to the advanced start menu where you can select Windows Safe Mode. If the computer boots into Safe Mode you can try System Restore to see if using earlier versions of the Windows configuration files is of any help.
Was the computer working before you encountered the message about the diskette drive? This problem can result from an incompatible device driver, so the question would be have you added anything to the computer lately? You should try booting the computer with only the keyboard, mouse, and monitor attached.
By the way; the message in your original post implied that your system drive is attached to the Master IDE port and that your SATA ports are empty. Is that a good assumption?
jackshack
6.4K Posts
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March 28th, 2012 15:00
This is not a failure message unless you actually have a 3.5" diskette drive. Your CMOS battery has probably failed so that the computer can't store a configuration and is resetting to defaults each time you turn it on.
Replace the CMOS battery, a CR 2032 lithium cell, and go back to setup (F2 during the Dell screen after starting the computer) to change the entry for the diskette drive to Not Present or Off, whichever you find.
The remainder of the message is simply telling you that you do not have a hard drive plugged into the first SATA port and that you have no slave drive on the Primary IDE port. While you are in System Setup to change the diskette drive to off, do the same for the second port on the primary IDE unless you actually have a second hard drive.
Lkurokawa
3 Posts
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March 28th, 2012 23:00
I replaced the battery and it got rid of the original message. Now it goes straight to a screen saying windows has failed to start normally. After that it counts down and when windows goes to start it hits a blue screen saying there was an error and windows was shut down to prevent damage. Any ideas on this one?
Lkurokawa
3 Posts
0
March 30th, 2012 15:00
The computer started working so thanks for the help. Turns out the operating system was corrupt and the I was able to boot from the xp reinstallation disk and fix it.
jackshack
6.4K Posts
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March 30th, 2012 22:00
Excellent! I'm glad it's working again. Best of luck to you!