'Operating system not found'

akahn99

Hi
Could somebody help me out here please, my friend gave me her Dell base unit today, It is a Dell optiplex, the operating system had been wiped out so I tried to install Windows XP with my CD, I went through the installation process ( the blue screen ) & there was 2 unpartitioned hard drives so I chose 1 and when it restarted it said something like Secondary Drive 1 not found.

These are the settings when I press F2

Primary Drive 0 Hard drive (Set to Auto)
Primary Drive 1 Hard drive (Set to Auto)
Secondary Drive 0 CD-rom (Set to Auto)
Secondary Drive 1 Unknown Device (Set to Auto)



When I restart it says:
Secondry hard disk drive 1 not found
WARNING: Dells disk monitoring system has detected that drive 1 on the primary EIDE controller is operating outside of normal specifications. It is advisable that you immediately back up your data....

Strike the F1 key to continue, F2 to run setup utility

(I hit F1)

A disk read error occured
Press CTRL ALT DEL to start

Sometimes it says Operating system not found.

Im completly lost here could someone help please:o

albertross_2

Take it apart, and see how many drives you have, and how they are wired up, including the CD.

Optiplexes are usually small, so difficult to fit 2 hard disks, and 2 DVD drives in.

Unless you have 4 drives, you'll need to set the bios to none for the missing one.

If the bios is seeing a smart error on the hard disk, then it could be on it's way out

TonyLisaP

Start again with the installation and ensure that you install the operating system to hard disk 0 as this will be the c: hard disk 1 will be the d:
You might find your friend had a bootloader that is residing on the machine and interferring with normal operation. When you load up the cd and get the disk options make sure that you remove the partitions that are already there and create new ones. Good luck