HI Hope someone might be able to help.. I am trying to fix a customers computer. She has a Time computer, with everything housed inside the monitor box. i.e. DVD-ROM, floppy, hdd, cpu etc are all inside the monitor box. When you boot the computer its gives an error saying "FIXED DISK NOT FOUND". I went into the BIOS got it to AUTO DETECT, but after abt 10 mins of 'detecting' I gave up on it. It appears that the comp isn’t detecting either the HDD or the DVD-ROM. I can boot from the floppy ok, but cant do anything else cos the BIOS doesn’t detected the HDD. It cant be a loose connection to the HDD or wrong jumper settings cos the comp has worked fine untill last week. (apparently it suddenly stopped working!) I would be grateful if anyone could give any suggestions as how to go abt fixing this. I am hesitant to remove the casing b'cos that will involve removing the back of the monitor. Could it be something like a failed IDE controller? Any help/suggestions gratefully accepted. Thanks.

The fact neither the HDD nor the DVD-Rom are detected just does suggest it's an EIDE failure or the EIDE connecting cable went out of work. I hope for you it's the last one.

Is it still under warranty? No, time to get your hands dirty. unplug the computer. Open it up, get an antistatic wrist strap and ground it to a common piece of metal inside. find and reseat the cable connecting the hard disk, DVD drive and motherboard. fire it up and check BIOS. Replace the cable if necessary. if these don't work I'd suspect the EIDE interface.

Yes, the likely possibility is that the IDE cable just came loose enough to be a problematic connection. Also, the Molex (power connector) is know to do similar things so ensure that this is securely connected as well. borelli34

Hi Thanks to everyone for the suggestions. Ill be having a go at replacing the EIDE cable. Although i have a feeling its the controller. Thanks again. ferdy-