Do you have it jumpered properly (as cable select)?

im wondering if its a mother board problem, but why does my original hdd boot up ok. ????

DId you reinstall the OS or clone the hard drive?

I cant get that far. I have installed the hard drive (to replace the current one) & the p.c doesn't even boot up.

Keep saying error seeking drive 1.

 

Or press f1 to re-try or f2 for set-up.

 

This is quite strange if you ask me. (im not a newby to p.c.'s)

 

Thanks for the replies guys.

 

Mike.

• Reboot system and enter the BIOS Setup by pressing F2. 
• Turn on Caps Lock, Scroll Lock and  Num Lock.
• Press ALT+ E then ALT+ F then ALT+ B
  

Have you set BIOS to boot first from CD and started with the XP reinstallation disc in the drive? . . You should see a prompt "Press any key to boot from CD" . . do that and you can partition the new drive and proceed to installing XP

wrs

 

 

 

Message Edited by paynemike on 02-18-2005 12:13 PM

 

                                  

Message Edited by paynemike on 02-18-2005 12:13 PM

Thanks for the reply..

Sadly i tried resetting the cmos, using the alt and "E" etc, but this still did not work

All it did is restart the computer, then it said performing automatic ide configuration

Which then came up :  Primary Master : Disk drive

                                      Secondary Master : cd-rom drive

                                      Secondry Slave : cd-rom drive.

Followed by strike F1 to re-try boot or F2 for setup utility.

I then got onto Dell, who advised me to perhaps try and swap the ide 1 with ide 2 on the main board.

I tried this, along with a load of other trial and errors & they finally came up with the idea to send an engineer out to replace the hard drive, as they rekon the hard drive might be faulty.

I then stated, that it was the hdd that i brought which i was having trouble with and not the original hdd, so you can imagine they weren't impressed after 30mins of diagnosis just to find that the original dell part works fine. (downer ay)

I cant understand this, the bios detects the new Western Digital 250gb hdd fine, along with its size & yet it wont go to the next stage of actually booting with the device.

Any more help is greatly appreciated.

 

Regards Mike.

I'm having a similar problem. The system recognises the new HD as a slave but will not boot up with it as a Master. I have noticed there is a small FAT partition on the old drive called EISA Configuration. I suspect this is required so the system will recognise the new drive as bootable. Any other thoughts?

hi there, i finally got it working. yey!!!!!!!!!!!!! - believe it or not, i had forgot i changed my default optical master drive (cd/r) with my dvd/r drive, so thus my dvd/r was the master & my cd/r (which came with p.c) is the slave.

when i was trying to boot up this new hard disk, i had the setup disk (for the western digital hdd)  in the cd/r and not in the master dvd /r. As soon as i placed the setup disk which came with the hdd, in the master drive it booted up no probs and went on to set up the hard disk for use with the p.c.

 

The only thing is now i have only got 127GB available out of 250 gb. i believe this is to do with win xp, being set up on the partioned part of the drive & the unpartioned part of the drive is just sitting there doing nothing.

I understand that win xp can actually recognize upto terrabite sizes.

 

I can't believe something as simple as this baffled me so much.

Isn't it always the simple things!