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9915
June 4th, 2003 21:00
Secondary hard disk drive 0 not found - and Windows not recognizing CD-RW/DVD
Intermittent problem but can definitely be recreated…
I received a shipment of 5 Precision 350 desktops and 3 notebooks this week. All Windows 2000 Pro SP3 systems. The desktops had one hard disk on IDE0 primary and a CD-RW/DVD on IDE1 primary.
So far I’ve opened 3 of the desktops, and have duplicated this issue on all three.
The issue – often when booting (usually when a CD-ROM is in the CDRW/DVD), the system BIOS will state that “Secondary hard disk drive 0 not found – hit F1 or F2…”
If entering the BIOS with F2, the secondary hard disk device was set to AUTO but then appeared as “Unknown”. Booting into windows from this point, with a CD-ROM in the drive, would cause Windows not to recognize the drive (it did NOT appear in device manager). The manual eject would also NOT work at this point. The drive seemed to be dead.
I reseated and cables, and switched to different power connectors for the drive, then rebooted. Same issue.
To open the drawer of the CD, I’d have to hit the manual eject immediately after turning on the system.
I called Dell tech support, but they were not helpful (as usual, I think I know more than their tech support staff - does everyone feel that way when you call Dell?). Anyway, I was also able to boot three times in a row, so they left the case open in case I ran into the problem again. And I did…
I later found that when the system booted with no CD in the drive, it would recognize the CD-RW/DVD drive in Windows 2000. However, if I used the manual eject to open the drawer, then put the CD in, then the system would seem to halt for a minute or so, then the CD-RW would disappear from the device manager.
I also found that if I used the Windows “eject” feature instead of the manual eject, I wouldn’t run into this issue and I could use the drive.
I searched high and low for answers. Partly on usenet, partly on support.dell.com community forums. Much of the advice was similar to what I’ve already tried. Some also suggested uninstalling Roxio, going through Roxio’s registry patches, then re-installing it. But that wasn’t the issue, as this issue occurred before Windows was even launched.
I opened the case again, and decided to check the jumper on the CD-RW/DVD. It was set to CABLE SELECT! I changed the jumper to MASTER, then rebooted. I didn’t receive the “hit F1 or F2” error, but I went into the BIOS setup anyway, and now the BIOS recognized the device as a CD-ROM (getting closer!).
When booting into Windows, it recognized the drive fine, and I was now able to open/close the drive dray with the manual eject button, without Windows losing the entire drive from the device manager.
Everything else seems to be working great now, no thanks to Dell.
Who at Dell can I contact regarding this, to make sure it doesn’t happen to other units that they're shipping out? Their poor customers. How friggen annoying!
And how about a thank you from Dell for me doing your tech support work? Perhaps a free computer?
-- Darren Nye
-- darrenn @ designresourcesgroup . com
thekwah
1 Message
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July 7th, 2003 01:00
I have had the same problem happen on my 530. No-one has answered so am I to assume that this was not resolved?... Mine occured after replacing the Dell CDROM with a DVDRAM... MATSHITA LF-D310.
Mine happens only on a warm boot, after a cold boot everthing is OK...
mehesque
1 Message
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October 28th, 2003 14:00
kool420deathsta
4 Posts
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October 28th, 2003 18:00
I find it most amusing that you dis all over Dell tech support on the Dell forum! I love it! come on Dell, get with it.
kool420deathsta
4 Posts
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October 29th, 2003 17:00
Dude, I really had it out with dell, they won’t budge with replacement sometimes. I talked to a tech she said the secondary ide needed reseating, I did that it worked for about 2 mins. the second tech said it was my DVD-ram/r drive ( im having the same trouble as the main thread with my precision 530) so i took it out it worked of course, but with no DANG dvd writing capability. the third tech said that the reason the dvd-ram\r wont work is because it didn't come with the system, I told him that was bull because it worked fine in my optiplex gx260. we had a round about discussion about config setting in the bios (dell bios=joke) and drive channel settings. He with answers and me shooting them down. so the last idea was to jumper all the drives to cable select ((Primary: dell HDD / my dvd-ram) (secondary: dell cd-rw, dell dvd-rom )) this is working for now, except the performance hit that comes with CS settings and the fact that my HDD and DVD-RAM are on the same channel. so what have we learned from this:
1) dell is a large computer corp. they don’t care about you or YOUR computer, but they will try to sell you one by using the word "dude".
2) Intel makes good chipsets, dell makes good computers, it is quite imposable to account for every variable in this equation (i.e. some devices will work perfectly with a system some will not.) see above for case in point
DLaware
4 Posts
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February 12th, 2004 02:00
A QUICK FIX: Here's what worked for me (I don't know if it will work for you!):
1. Reboot
2. Hit F2 continuously until you see the gray Dell "menu"
3. Make sure Num Lock, Caps Lock, and Scroll Lock are all ON (lights are lit)
4. Hit the Alt key and the F key simultaneously
5. Hit the Alt key and the E key simultaneously
6. Hit Esc
7. Choose "Save changes and Exit"
Obviously, this doesn't tell you WHY it happened, nor HOW to prevent it from happening again -- sorry, that I don't know...
Agent23
1 Message
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July 20th, 2007 10:00