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BIOS will not recognize any drives
Name: ramsundar Date: March 26, 2006 at 14:07:07 Pacific OS: windows 2000 CPU/Ram: Xeon 1.7Ghz/1GB Product: Dell Precision 530
Comment:
Hi, I have this problem with my Dell, where in when I boot, the BIOS does not show any of my hard drives (two) or my CD and DVD drives. I have opened the case and tried plugging in using different cables but none works. The only success I have is when I do not connect my primary hard drive. When I donot connect the primary drive, My CD and DVD drives show up as secondary drives in the BIOS but none of my hard drives are seen in the BIOS. The moment I connect my primary hard drive, none of them are seen in the BIOS. Is this a problem with the mother board or the hard drive itself. The system was working perfectly before this problem has happened. Any help is appreciated.
Name: steigrafx Date: March 26, 2006 at 14:23:40 Pacific
Reply:
I have little experience with laptops, but I've seen a number of desktops where a dead hard drive prevents the other drives from being recognized. Do you have another hard drive that you can substitute to check this?
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Response Number 2
Name: name Date: March 26, 2006 at 15:21:49 Pacific
Reply:
Are you using the 80 conductor cables for your hard drives?
How about jumpers, how are they set?
Can you get one drive at a time, as master, to "detect?"
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Response Number 3
Name: ham30 Date: March 26, 2006 at 17:39:55 Pacific
Reply:
Sounds like a incorrect jumpering or cabling problem to me. Try one drive at a time.
It could also be a defective drive causing the others to fail.
Sorry, I do not check for private messages
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Response Number 4
Name: GX1 Man Date: March 26, 2006 at 18:56:05 Pacific
Reply:
Are you using cable selct (CS)?
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Response Number 5
Name: ramsundar Date: March 29, 2006 at 11:01:07 Pacific
Reply:
The weird thing was this was working fine before the problem. I had not changed any cables or disk settings. I finally got this problem resolved. Somehow the BIOS had been corrupted. I reset the BIOS to default settings and went to BIOS setup re do everything and boot again. This time, it somehow worked fine and booted off the hard drives. I am able to access both my hard drives now as well as the CD and DVD drives.
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