The bios is complaining because you have set it to expect two devices (0 and 1) on each of the IDE channels and I suspect you only have one. Go into the bios and set the second device on the primary and secondary IDE channels from AUTO to NONE.
I tried your suggestion, but no go. I went into the BIOS and changed the Primary Drive 1 and Secondary Drive 1 to "off" (auto and off were the only two choices). I then escaped out with saving and rebooted. This time I didn't even get the Dell boot screen, it just went to "press F1 to continue or F2 to go to set up".
Side note I have also downloaded the latest BIOS and put that on a formated disk and tried to flash the BIOS. This would not even go. I would get the same error as above.
I formatted a cd to be bootable and was able to flash the BIOS from 02 to 05. Yaaaa for that part.
Out come. No change :( When I have the Primary and Secondary 1 channels turned off it still goes to the "strike f1 to retry, f2 for setup" When I have them on I get the Dell boot up screen then the error message.
OK, so with the bios settings off, you get the "f1" message but not the error about the drives missing? Then this is now a different problem which was obscured by the incorrect drive settings. Try resetting the NVRAM first. Then you need to look at what the LED error means - this will give you a clue. Sorry, I don't have a 240 so can't help on that....
So I tried resetting the RAM and even tried in in the other slot. No go.
I looked up on Dells sight and fount that the error code that the lights are telling me is "Other Failure" and to contact Dell for support. The error lights are yellow, green, green, green.
Also during boot up when the F1 message comes up I get 2 quick beeps.
I went into the BIOS and changed the Primary Drive 1 and Secondary Drive 1 to "off" (auto and off were the only two choices). I then escaped out with saving and rebooted.
If you exited SETUP without saving your changes then your changes are not saved (imagine that). i.e. you actually changed nothing for Primary and Secondary Drive 1
If you put in a known good drive does the system work? If so you can try to slave this bad drive and see if you can get any info off of it. Also if you want to try and save the drive you can run a debug on it.
Warning: Performing a debug on your hard drive will completely remove all data, partition information, the mbr, and pretty much everything from your hard drive. There will be no recoverable data remaining. You can use your dell drivers and utilities to get to a command promt. Then do the following -
I have installed a new drive was able to format it and install windows xp pro on to it. From there the issue of not finding the primary drive returned.
I support a campus (higher education) and of all our Dell computers only two are GX-240
This F1 F2 "nonsense" happened one day. We have never flashed our BIOS; however, eventually I discovered that simply re-doing Ctrl-Alt-Del would get the system to come up OR perhaps it was F12 to go to boot option for this one time, then choosing the bottom option (6?) that says I want to do some kind of testing or temporary, then going perhaps through the F1 F2 again and hitting F1 and eventually it would go on through and bring up Windows XP.
Come to think of it, I may be confusing this sequence with a GX-260 with which I have to do this sort of thing every time and it works every time.
Dell has me open up the case and remove the drive cable from every connection, in turn, re-connecting it firmly.
My main (long-winded) point is not always to take the F1 and F2 at face value because I have at least these two models 240 and 260 where I am able magically to continue beyond and around what seems an insurmountable roadblock.
Enabling a drive that does not exist will show the Drive not found press F1 to continue.
The 40-pin 80-conductor cable is orientation specific. The cable connectors are color-coded: blue for the host connector, black and gray for the primary and secondary disk drives. The blue connector should be installed into the Primary IDE connector.
Blue goes to motherboard
Black goes to the First drive
Grey goes to the second drive
The cable ONLY WORKS 1 way and ALL DRIVES ARE CABLE SELECT FOR cdrom and hdd.
peterfelgate_ce40d3
1.3K Posts
0
March 12th, 2006 12:00
tazman13
7 Posts
0
March 12th, 2006 22:00
Thanks for the response!!!
I tried your suggestion, but no go. I went into the BIOS and changed the Primary Drive 1 and Secondary Drive 1 to "off" (auto and off were the only two choices). I then escaped out with saving and rebooted. This time I didn't even get the Dell boot screen, it just went to "press F1 to continue or F2 to go to set up".
Side note I have also downloaded the latest BIOS and put that on a formated disk and tried to flash the BIOS. This would not even go. I would get the same error as above.
tazman13
7 Posts
0
March 12th, 2006 23:00
A quick update....
I formatted a cd to be bootable and was able to flash the BIOS from 02 to 05. Yaaaa for that part.
Out come. No change :( When I have the Primary and Secondary 1 channels turned off it still goes to the "strike f1 to retry, f2 for setup" When I have them on I get the Dell boot up screen then the error message.
Thanks again for your help!!!!!!
peterfelgate_ce40d3
1.3K Posts
0
March 13th, 2006 05:00
tazman13
7 Posts
0
March 13th, 2006 09:00
Thanks again for the quick response!!!
So I tried resetting the RAM and even tried in in the other slot. No go.
I looked up on Dells sight and fount that the error code that the lights are telling me is "Other Failure" and to contact Dell for support. The error lights are yellow, green, green, green.
Also during boot up when the F1 message comes up I get 2 quick beeps.
Thanks again for your help.
tazman13
7 Posts
0
March 13th, 2006 10:00
I forgot to put the link in where I got the diagnostic light info from. So here it is...
<ADMIN NOTE: Broken link has been removed from this post by Dell>
Thanks again.
tcsenter
15 Posts
0
March 13th, 2006 19:00
tazman13
7 Posts
0
March 13th, 2006 22:00
tcsenter
15 Posts
0
March 14th, 2006 00:00
lol! My brain transposed two words and saw "escaped with out saving" instead of "escaped out with saving". Sorry about that. :smileywink:
JD2004
14 Posts
0
March 18th, 2006 01:00
Message Edited by JD2004 on 03-17-2006 09:21 PM
tazman13
7 Posts
0
March 18th, 2006 14:00
BBraxton
2 Intern
•
2K Posts
0
April 7th, 2006 17:00
This F1 F2 "nonsense" happened one day. We have never flashed our BIOS; however, eventually I discovered that simply re-doing Ctrl-Alt-Del would get the system to come up OR perhaps it was F12 to go to boot option for this one time, then choosing the bottom option (6?) that says I want to do some kind of testing or temporary, then going perhaps through the F1 F2 again and hitting F1 and eventually it would go on through and bring up Windows XP.
Come to think of it, I may be confusing this sequence with a GX-260 with which I have to do this sort of thing every time and it works every time.
Dell has me open up the case and remove the drive cable from every connection, in turn, re-connecting it firmly.
My main (long-winded) point is not always to take the F1 and F2 at face value because I have at least these two models 240 and 260 where I am able magically to continue beyond and around what seems an insurmountable roadblock.
speedstep
9 Legend
•
47K Posts
0
April 11th, 2006 22:00
The 40-pin 80-conductor cable is orientation specific. The cable connectors are color-coded: blue for the host connector, black and gray for the primary and secondary disk drives. The blue connector should be installed into the Primary IDE connector.
Blue goes to motherboard
Black goes to the First drive
Grey goes to the second drive
The cable ONLY WORKS 1 way and ALL DRIVES ARE CABLE SELECT FOR cdrom and hdd.