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Secondary Drives 0 and 1 not found
I hope this is less a nuisance than what I may think it may be... what, with my ignorance on my dad's PC's specs and all.
Anyways, this happened recentrly:
As my father tried to install some software on his PC, he found out he couldn't quite easly. He kept complaining of some error message saying something like "corrupt program" or something of such sort.
... But, that didn't stop him from insisting. Oh no. He kept on, until his PC could take no more, and finally froze.
Having no other optiom but to hard reset, he did so, and everything seemed to work fine: the Dell logo came on screen, and everytinh was loading perfectly. Except...
... at some point, it stopped loading, at it displayed a message that said something of an IDE something not working within it's normal parameters, also suggesting that we make a back up of everything we had on our hard drive.
It then gave us two options: pressing F1, it would take us to the Windows startup option menu, were we could select in what mode we wanted to run Windows; pressing F2 would take us to my computers config. menu.
F1, though coherent to use in the beginning, proved quite useless, because no matter what option I'd pick, I'd end up back at this point, with the same options to choose from.
Now, F2 was particularly interesting... When I first got to this menu, all I could see was how my PC's hardware was configured. Nothing strange, until I stumbled upon my secondary drivers config.
It identified it as UNKNOWN DRIVER. No matter how many times I fiddled with it's options, I didn't get anywhere new. Oddly enough... at some random times, when I visited this menu, my computer seemed to have identified my drivers, though I could still not get anywhere else.
I've read about this... how it may be a problem with connections and what not, but my father confesses he had no violent fit with that machine, so he could not have knocked anything loose. I checked and cleaned every driver connection, yet still nothing.
... Though, throughout this message, I referred my dad's machine as mine, I must point out that I made such a mistake, because I hardly ever use it. I have no idea what specs it may have, but I'll try to describe what I feel may be (and what, according to my father's knowledge, also, "is"):
Windows XP (came with the machine... have no idea what service pack nor version, and what patches does it have alreadu installed), 12 GB hard drive, CD-Rom drive and CD-DVD rom drive, floppy disk drive, Pentium 3 and... blast, I'm no good at describing specs.
Perhaps it may not be noteworthy, but I plead that the fellow reader may try to solve this problem that haunts my dad.
If you need more specific info on my dad's computer, I'll try to figure it out.
I just hope you could help me.
Thanking your attention 'till this point, I bid youo farewell.. at least, until I see an answer.
-Sokras
Sam Waring
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June 19th, 2007 11:00
First, you don't mention whether this is a Dimension, OptiPlex, Precision, or just what. Take a look at the ring around the power button; the model should be printed there.
Second, the error "IDE drive not within normal parameters" is SMART (Self-Monitoring Analysis and Reporting Technology) telling you that a hard drive is getting ready to fail, if it hasn't done so already. Given the way you describe the system's behavior, I'd say the drive has already failed.
Third, when you press F2 you're going into the BIOS system setup. Within there, the secondary drives 0 or 1 as unknown devices may or may not be worrisome. Typically the secondary PATA controller is reserved for CD or DVD drives, and sometimes they don't ID themselves to the controller in an understandable way. As long as the optical drives function properly, I shouldn't worry about whether the secondary controller can identify the exact model of drive.