Drives not recognised!!

Question

When I first switched my computer on the following message came up:   Primary Drive 0 not found Primary Drive 1 not found Secondary Drive 1 not found   Strike the F1 key to continue, F2 to run the setup utility   Can anyone please help?!!!!!:

kka · Answer

It's a 40 GB IDE Hard Drive.   It must be a new hard drive, the pc is brand new, only received it yesterday! I have tried re-connecting all the cables but to no avail. Still doesn't work.

tigerdub · Answer

(sry bad english, me is german :)   with type of hdd ?  s-ata / ide   new or used hdd´s ?   make sure that all connections (power/data cable) are connected. (u can also disconnect all cables and re-connect them to make sure that they got rightly connected).   make sure that youre bios is up to date.   strike F2 to see the bios. use your bios-guide to check the correckt bios settings.   most typical errors are :  power cable not connected , ide type cable connected the wrong way (cable mirrored-false connected) , the pc (bios) does not support the hdd size (recomment to older pcs) , wrong bios settings (mostly for ide users).   gl&hf

tigerdub · Answer

ok, step 2.

disable all s-ata options in the bios.

use auto-detect hdd if this funktion is abvailable.

make sure that : your hdd is jumpered on master (jumper at hdd backfront) or cable-selected.

the ide ports are activated.

it is strongly recomment that u use the right cable connection (for example black connector slave hdd/grey connector master hdd/blue connector mainboard). u can read this at the mainboard manual.

at least a hardware test. is your hdd working ? u must heard your hdd when power on your system.

(hope u got not to much fan`s inside ;).

otherwise try another hdd (from a friend for example) to use in this system.

gl&hf

kka · Answer

Made another attempt to get it working, finally got it to the windows xp welcome screen, everything worked fine, up until i shut it down and restarted to see if the start-up problem had been fixed.

But same message appeared again! Can't get any further. At least I can confirm that the hard drive works...

peterfelgate_ce40d3 · Answer

What machine is this?  If moderately old (2 years older or more), you need to set ALL IDE drives on both IDE channels to the cable select position (the original devices should be set to this) NOT master or slave - these settings can affect drives on both IDE channels.  In the bios, only set to AUTO those devices you actually have present - set the remainder to NONE.

kka · Answer

Tried this, still the same message appears. It is a Dimension 3000, brand new.

Bison-II · Answer

When asked, go to the setup screen.

Then activate......Num lock...Scroll lock and Cap lock. (all three lights on)

Next enter ALT E (beep should be heard)

Next enter ALT F (beep)

Next enter ALT B The screen should go to .........Ide Config. and scan your PC

to find all IDE units. Check to see all are listed. (cdrom, Hdd).

LBM

kka · Answer

Tried this and the following message appeared:   Diskette Drive 0 seek failure (this is probably because I don't have a floppy drive) Secondary Master: CD-ROM Device   Strike F1 to retry boot, F2 for setup utility   So no hard drive???

powney · Answer

Hi, kka iam having the same problem with my 2400 as you had with your system and i cant get any help from customer care only got the computer on the 11th of Nov from the factory, if your problems are solved can you tell me the solution many thanks

Bison-II · Answer

Monday,

Yes, your system does not see your HDD.

Setup must be checked and changed to see your type HDD. I would think yours would be

a (p)ATA (large gray flat ribbon cable) and not a (s)ATA with a blue round data cable.

If you have the latest BIOS with all items listed in a column at left, your drives will listed

under p-ATA and not s-ATA. Turn on p-ATA. Or enable all and see what come up. Don't

forget to save your results on exit.

LBM

Storage, Drives & Media

Drives not recognised!!

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