Primary Master Hard Disk Error

Guapa1

Yes I have, but when I save and exit, it goes back to the message in the 1st screen and when I press DEL the priority has changed back to REM DEV being first.

rdpro

The first few posts indicate that the hard drive controller board has failed - nothing short of a miracle or expensive repairs will get it working again.

It's possible (but unlikely) that, if you add the drive as a slave to another working pc, or use a USB caddy to attach it to another pc, the data might be readable, but I doubt it I'm afraid - most 'easy recoveries' are when the disk surface becomes damaged, rather than the board.

Guapa1

So does that mean if I get a new hard drive it'll work in the PC?

rdpro

yup, just make sure you get the same type of drive as the old one - ATA drives have wide flat ribbons, SATA drives have small L-shaped connectors.

JasX

rdpro wrote: »

The first few posts indicate that the hard drive controller board has failed - nothing short of a miracle or expensive repairs will get it working again.

wow, not sure where you get that from. did you read beyond the first post?

As it IS detected in BIOS so you should be able to get the manufacturers low level diagnostics software to work which will tell you if your drive is ok or dead

Seems to be some confusion as to whether your drive is either a:

Samsung HM R0JC
-use either ES tools or HUTIL

http://www.samsung.com/global/business/hdd/support/utilities/ES_Tool.html

http://www.samsung.com/global/business/hdd/support/utilities/Support_HUTIL.html


or Maxtor

-use Seatoools DOS version
http://www.seagate.com/www/en-us/support/downloads/seatools


(have a look at the sticker on the side of it to work out which is correct -tho if the discrepancy in identifying the drive is a symthom of the problem its not the best of omens....)

All the above have options to make a bootable floppy disk or burn a bootable CD

IMPORTANT - the above are very powerful tools for testing and repairing the drive, both are perfectly capable of eraasing the drives. Use the test functions to run a short or long test on the drive. Be wary if any of them ask for permission to repair drive 'sectors' or erase/format/overwrite the drive you will be looking at losing data and i'd suggest comming back here to ask before proceeding.

Guapa1

OK I've decided to change the HDD, it's well due for an upgrade anyway. Hopefully it'll be with me tomorrow, I think it's pretty straight forward, just pop in the new one where the old one was right?. I guess I could find a video to show me how to do that and make the old one a slave drive to see if it can be saved? Either way thanks everyone for helping me try to figure this thing out.

JasX

Guapa1 wrote: »

OK I've decided to change the HDD,

Is it a SATA (L-shaped connector) or IDE/PATA (lots of pins type connector) type drive?

If its SATA then I definitely definitely recommend getting a Samsung 1TB F3 drive -benchmarks fastest conventional drive on the market by a fair margin and is no more expensive than the competition.

...and given the hard drive is usually the slowest bottlekneck of a PC these days it's where you're most likely to notice the difference.

ebuyer have them on offer for £47 atm (item # 173804 )

Donnie

JasX wrote: »

Is it a SATA (L-shaped connector) or IDE/PATA (lots of pins type connector) type drive?

If its SATA then I definitely definitely recommend getting a Samsung 1TB F3 drive -benchmarks fastest conventional drive on the market by a fair margin and is no more expensive than the competition.

...and given the hard drive is usually the slowest bottlekneck of a PC these days it's where you're most likely to notice the difference.

ebuyer have them on offer for £47 atm (item # 173804 )

It's IDE, there are links in posts #20 and #46.

Donnie

Guapa1 wrote: »

OK I've decided to change the HDD, it's well due for an upgrade anyway. Hopefully it'll be with me tomorrow, I think it's pretty straight forward, just pop in the new one where the old one was right?. I guess I could find a video to show me how to do that and make the old one a slave drive to see if it can be saved? Either way thanks everyone for helping me try to figure this thing out.

Yes, that's right.

Oops..have found the Boot Menu for the PC: Boot Menu

Here are the Diagnostic Codes

Guapa1

OK, so the hard drive came, and I fitted it with no problem and got online to start updating XP to SP3.
On the last restart I had to do this came up 'please check your input signal or connection' then goes to power save.

*EDIT*
I've turned the PC off and on by the mains, and it says windows didn't shut down successfully, and gives me the option to start in safe mode. When I start it normally, it says

signal frequency is out of range
FH 83.9 khz
FV 159.8 khz
Please change signal timing

any ideas?

*EDIT*
I've had a look online and saw a suggestion to sign on in safe mode and change my refresh rate down to about 60, and click on the check box to only use refresh rates that the monitor can manage.

I tried to do this, but under monitor setting it doesn't give me any options but use hardware default setting. The box which says, hide modes that this monitor can't display is unchecked and shaded out. In the troubleshooting tab I can change hardware acceleration, but don't know if it'll make a difference?