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Primary Drive 0 not found
I have a Dell Optiplex GX270 that I took home from work. Thing is, the company kept the harddrive because there was sensitive info on it. The computer was working fine, as far as I could tell, before the HD was taken out. I have a couple of harddrives at home each 10GB. Every time I try connecting a harddrive and restarting the machine I get the error "Primary Drive 0 not found. Hit F1 to reboot, F2 to enter setup". When I hit F2 to enter the BIOS setup, under Primary Master Drive it says "Unknown Device" and it is set to auto detect.
I tried a different IDE cable and no dice. I checked the pins on the motherboard and on the HD and they are all fine. I disconnected the
CD ROM drive and plugged the Harddrive in its place and I got the same error. I tried it with a different harddrive, but I got the same error again. I plugged the CD ROM back in and it found the CD ROM. This leads you to believe its the harddrive, but I tried 3 different harddrives and I know 1 works on my old machine just fine, but when I plug it into the new machine it fails to find it. I tried playing with the jumpers setting it to CS, Master, Slave, but all that really does is give me a different error... a blue screen saying somthing along the lines of a problem was detected, make sure you do not have a virus on your hard drive, run chkdsk, etc... (even on the HD that runs fine on my old Dell computer... so i don't believe it is a HD issue.)
I could try replacing the CR2032 battery, but I really don't believe that is the issue. Does anyone have any advice?
I read some other posts and it was also suggested to clear the NVRAM. But doesn't clearing the NVRAM defaulted all your BIOS options back to their factory settings? If so the Harddrive I'm plugging in now is not the original factory HD. Will that be a problem?
Any advice would be greatly appreciated!
Thanks
Duhhh
251 Posts
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October 30th, 2007 16:00
You should use CS jumpering, and plug the drive into the END of the cable (if it has two IDE connectors). Make sure the power plug is in snug, then turn on your computer and press F2. If you can see the HD, you are in business. Put in an OS install CD and boot from that CD. You should be able to erase any partitions on your drive, then re-format and install an OS for your system.
Don't bother with the battery, unless you get config errors after turning your system off (the battery just keeps the memory alive when you kill the power - you can run a system without it, but you'd have to re-set the clock and config every time you turn the system on).
soccertes
4 Posts
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October 30th, 2007 17:00
soccertes
4 Posts
0
November 1st, 2007 17:00
Duhhh
251 Posts
0
November 2nd, 2007 15:00
You have witnessed the problem of moving a boot drive to another system. Sometimes, the OS can reconfigure itself. It's usually not worth trying. You can move a DATA drive back & forth, but not a boot drive.
Dell's driver download system is great for refreshing drivers. Get a big USB drive and go to a working system with a fast internet connection. You can download the latest driver for ALL devices on your system, and then take that to your system and install them. The only complaint I have with the Dell download system is the file naming convention (they still use 8.3 names). I always rename the files to tell me the system they are for, the device, and the revision. I also leave the Rxxx so if I ever go back to the support site, I can tell what file I already have (my files end up looking something like XPS610-Audio-A01-R1234567.exe)
soccertes
4 Posts
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November 2nd, 2007 18:00