Primary Master Hard Disk Error

Guapa1

Donnie wrote: »

I guess that you have to press F2 on Boot up to get into the BIOS. You can take a look in there to see if the HDD and optical drive are even recognised in there.

Next, you can reboot and hit F12 on start up...this should get you into 'Diagnostics'. Hit Enter at that point and let it run the tests.

When I try to press F2 and F12, it just goes back to the original message in post 1.

Donnie

If you checked the wiring and all seem ok, you'll then have to decide if you are going to buy new components or go to eBay.

JasX

KillerWatt wrote: »

Optical drive recognised according to >THIS< post (HDD not found though).
Quite an old drive so probably just worn out.

Not quite, that tells me an optical drive is configured in the boot device order (and therefore is detected)

It tells me a hard drive is not selected in the boot device order however nothing about it beign detected or not? is there another screen that says things like 'primary IDE master' 'primary IDE slave' 'secondary IDE master' 'secondary IDE slave' and has anything against any of those, could say SATA instead of IDE. Probably the first page you arrive at going into setup...

Guapa1

Hello!

JasX I went into advanced, then IDE config and this is what it shows

IDE controller [both]

PCI IDE bus master [enabled]

Primary IDE Master [maxtor 4d4040h2 ]

Primary IDE slave not detected

Secondary IDE Master [samsung cdrw/dvd sm-33]

Secondary IDE slave not detected.

Donnie

So the drive is being detected. Make sure that the BIOS is set correctly.

Configure the BIOS

Run the system setup program.
Enable LBA mode and UDMA mode, if applicable.
Select the auto-detect option.
Save and exit the system setup program.

You can make things a little easier on yourself by buying the CD caddy that I suggested(might be useful if you ever buy a Netbook ), on you can make an existing USB drive bootable. Hiren's Boot CD has a plethora of Hard Disk Tools

Hiren's BootCD 11.0 Choose 'Direct HTTP Mirror'.

Guapa1

Right so I'm 100% clear, you're saying I should turn my old laptop into an external cd/dvd player, make up the Hiren's Boot CD, plug it into the PC and try to run it?

closed

Guapa1 wrote: »

When I go to boot it says:

boot device priority - when I enter the menu it has:
1st boot device [removable dev]
2nd boot device [atapi cd-rom]

removable devices

1st removable device [1st floppy drive]

atapi cd-rom drives

1si atapi cdrom [samsung cdrw/dvd sm-33]

Can you add primary hard disk to the boot list?

Guapa1

No there is no option with maxtor on it in the boot tab.

closed

have you got the xp cd that came with it?

another machine or caddy you could plug it into?

you've reseated the ribbon cable at both ends, motherboard, and disk, and made sure the power lead (white thing) is in place properly?

does the disk make any unusual noises?

You could try resetting the bios to defaults.

Guapa1

closed wrote: »

have you got the xp cd that came with it?

another machine or caddy you could plug it into?

you've reseated the ribbon cable at both ends, motherboard, and disk, and made sure the power lead (white thing) is in place properly?

does the disk make any unusual noises?

You could try resetting the bios to defaults.

I found the XP CD :jI thought we didn't have it, but it was behind the roxio install disk.

I don't have another machine or caddy to put it in

I've checked all the cables and they are all secure, I don't have a white power lead though.

When I switch it on, instead of booting up it beeps once and then displays the message in the original post.