Primary drive 0 not found. Dimension 3000

Hard drive failure is much more likely than having a drive controller fail.  Have you tried resetting the CMOS by removing the back-up cell found on the main board?  Disconnect everything, including power, from the tower, open it up and remove the cell, press the power button and hold it in for about fifteen seconds while the cell is out, put the cell back into the holder making certain that it is oriented the same way as it was when you removed it, reconnect monitor, keyboard, mouse, and power, and see if you can now get to system setup by pressing F2.

It is also possible on a machine of this age that the CMOS battery has failed and is the reason you are having trouble.  Try a new one to see if that helps.

Hi Jack,

 Thanks for being here to help me again. I'm not sure what you mean by back-up cell. Is there another battery on the motherboard besides the CMOS battery?

Jayme

Hi Ron,

 Okay I did as suggested and pulled the CMOS battery. I held the power button for about 20 seconds and then put in a new CMOS battery. I booted up the PC and had to shut it down and boot again into the setup menu and re-set the date and time. After doing that I got the same "Primary drive 0 not found" message. I re-booted in to boot device menu again and ran a drive diagnostic. According to the diagnostic the Primary IDE drive passes the test. I rebooted into the utility partition and the system is currently running some tests.

 If I need to repair the files in the boot sector, can that be done without the original Windows XP disc? I may have a Windows XP disc around here somewhere, but the owner of the PC wasn't able to find his. I think there may be a recovery partition on the hard drive. Can I access that with a Linux disc and then run the Windows recovery program?

Jayme

There's only one battery. JackShack used CMOS battery and back-up cell interchangably.

The error message could also mean the boot sector files are damaged and need to be repaired.

Isn't this fun?? :emotion-6:

Ron

If you use the PC Restore partition on the hard drive, all personal files and software installed by the user will be gone forever. So you must back up those files on external media first. You access PC Restore by rebooting and pressing Ctrl-F11 as soon as you see the narrow blue stripe across the top of the screen. Then just follow the prompts. You'll have to reinstall the XP service packs and all other Microsoft updates again after PC Restore, but it's still faster than a reformat reinstall.

You could use the fixboot command on the drive, but you'll need to boot from an XP CD to do that. Keep in mind, if you use fixboot, you'll lose access to PC Restore because fixboot will overwrite Dell's custom boot files.

If the owner is in the US, they can request a replacement Windows XP from Dell here. They might charge for it...

BTW: What color are the 4 diagnostic LEDs on rear of the tower when it won't boot from the hard drive?

Ron

Hi Ron,

 Can I use any Windows XP disc to get into the recovery console? If so I can check with Gene's daughter and see if she has the disc for her laptop. Will FIXMBR work if I can get access to a Windows XP CD and not effect the Dell custom boot files?  The lights on the rear of the PC are grn, grn, grn, ambr. Thanks again for the help.

Jayme

You can use any XP CD to run Recovery Console.

Fixboot will destroy the Dell boot files. That means you will lose access to PC Restore and to Dell's Utilities partition. So think before using fixboot.

GGGA means "Another failure has occurred"  a catch-all for problems. The manual says:

• Ensure that the cables are properly connected to the system board from the hard drive, CD drive, and DVD drive.
• If there is an error message on your screen identifying a problem with a device (such as the floppy drive or hard drive), check the device to make sure it is functioning properly.
• The operating system is attempting to boot from a device (such as the floppy drive or hard drive); check system setup to make sure that the boot sequence is correct for the devices installed on your computer.

Before going further, you should follow those recommendations to check cables, boot sequence etc. .  And you may need to strip it down to bare minimum, meaning disconnecting the optical drives, removing all PCI cards, except video card etc. since some device other than the hard drive may have failed.

Ron

I can't type today!

Just a couple of comments here; it should be considered that if the reason for the failure is the boot info in the first drive track, most likely the sectors cannot be read.  Though it is not impossible that this is a soft failure, the most frequent cause is that the sectors in that track have failed.  If that is the case, the drive cannot be used as a boot drive because the info in track 0 is the only info on the disk that cannot be placed anywhere else on the drive.  Before going too far playing with the old drive you should really try a known good drive to see if the error changes.

Also, if sectors on the drive are beginning to fail (which I can't tell since we haven't seen a report from the detailed disk scan), you should consider whether or not there is data on the drive that needs to be recovered.  The drive will only get worse with time and sometimes continuing to use it accelerates the rate of deterioration.

I did as suggested and removed the cables from the optical drive the front USB hubs and the front audio connector. Their was no change in the results. After hooking everything back up the message on the screen changed to

"Loading PBR for descriptor 2...done.

NTLDR is compressed

Press Ctrl+Alt+Del to restart"

With a flashing cursor below the message. Also all four lights on the back are now green.  

I will copy the files to another computer and run a disc diagnostic and report back.

Jayme

A bit of progress!

Read this for a simple fix for the NTLDR is compressed problem. You'll need to boot from an XP CD and launch Recovery Console. But once you use this little fix, the (current) problem should be solved.

And lets hope that's the last of the problems!  Otherwise,  I'm going to send you a sledge hammer! :emotion-5:

Ron

Ron,

 I had to order an XP CD off of ebay. It will be a few days before I'll have an update. I'm looking for a good Imaging software now to make an ISO of the hard drive and then I'm going to do diagnostic on the drive. I'll let you know how everything turns out after I get me disc.

Jayme

Sounds like the system's owner didn't/couldn't request the XP CD from Dell...pity....

Run the "NTLDR compressed" fix first and see if the system boots afterwards. Then run the diagnostics.

Both Seagate and Western Digital offer FREE imaging software to anyone who owns one of their hard drives. Seagate's free software is a light version of Acronis and only allows full backup images and not incremental images, but that's fine for what you need. It does allow you to create a bootable CD with software to restore an image onto the hard drive. I use the Seagate offering all the time to image my hard drive on a USB drive.

Don't know what WD provides but it might also be a light version of Acronis.

Check 'whichever' web site to get the freebie software. You can always invest in something with more features down the road if the light version isn't sufficient. :emotion-5:

Ron

Hi Ron,

 Thanks for the suggestions on the imaging software. I'll check them out for future use. I free program online last night called HDClone. I used it this morning and made an image of the HDD. I wanted to run a diagnostic on the drive and the WD software that came on my UBCD said I should back up my HDD before running any tests. I ran a quick test and an extended test and both tests passed with 0 errors.

  As for the XP CD I found an Original Dell disc online for $19.95 including shipping. The seller has a 99.4% seller rating so I figured it was a safe bet and faster than waiting for Dell. I'll post and update after I get the Dell Disc. Now I've got to tear this Compaq laptop that I'm fixing down, because I put the ribbon cable for the touchpad in backwards. :-) Thanks again for your help.

Jayme

Actually Dell is pretty good about shipping the disks. When I needed a replacement XP CD, they sent it by overnight express! Amazing!

Let us know what happens when you get the CD.

Ron