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When I got home last night, my computer was freezing up and going extremely slow in general so I decided it must be time to reboot. When I rebooted, I heard 2 quick beeps (which I found to mean "POST error, review screen for error code.")
On my monitor it listed a bit about my computer / BIOS and then:
Primary drive 0 not found
Primary drive 1 not foundI have 4 drives:
1. 40gb Dell Standard Hard Drive (Primary Master / Windows XP Install)
2. 120gb Western Digital Hard Drive (Primary Slave)
3. CD-ROM Drive (Secondary Master)
4. CD-RW Drive (Secondary Slave)Hoping that this was just a wire or power problem, I changed all the cables around. I took out the power cable from the CD-ROM drives and exchanged it power cable from the hard drives. Then I exchanged the ribbon cables.
Powering back on I was met with the same error, only more:
Primary drive 0 not found
Primary drive 1 not found
Secondary drive 0 not found
Secondary drive 1 not foundSwitching the cables back to their original positions gives me the first error (only Primary drives 0 and 1 not found).
Now, I know its not a power problem (both the CD-ROM drives open fine either way). This leads me to believe that either the ribbon cables are dead, the IDE motherboard connection is fried or both hard drives crashed at the exact same time.
I looked around in BIOS and heres what I found:
Boot Sequence:
1. Hard disk drive (not installed)
2. IDE CD-ROM DeviceDrive Configuration:
Primary Master - Unknown Device
Primary Slave - Unknown Device
Secondary Master - CD-ROM Device
Secondary Slave - CD-ROM DeviceThis setup has been working for about 6 months now, I don't know why it would suddenly break. I'd be extremely grateful for any help or tips. Thanks.
Boot into the BIOS screens and see if the drives are setup correctly. All 4 IDE channels on Auto. Elsewhere in the BIOS there should be a setting to enable the harddisk controllers. Check that both are enabled. Put the drive cables back as they were. If that doesn't help, clear the CMOS and reset the date, time, drives, etc and try again.
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Grok Lobster:
Tried that, didn't work.RobbieDickon:
Still trying to find out how to get an updated bios. Any tips?OtheHill:
I have tried all of that without luck, except for clearing the CMOS.I found a guide on how to upgrade a bios, but I don't know where to find an updated bios! How do I find out the motherboard manufacturer/model?
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Were all of these drives working before? I don't think a BIOS update is needed. Did you enter the BIOS and look around. Why not clearing the CMOS? If you don't know how then just remove the MBoard battery for a while and then replace. You will know if the clearing was successful by the date and time in the BIOS. They will need to tb reset.
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Yes, all these drives have been working for about 6 months. I made no change to the BIOS, CMOS, drivers or anything else.
I'll go take out the motherboard battery right now and see if it does anything.
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Nope, still not seeing the hard drives. I have double checked all the connections numerous times. I don't know what else to do.
And to add to the wierd factor, I ran a Dell diagnostic CD. It ran some tests on the hard drives, I could hear the drives spinning, and the tests passed (just a basic read/write test). Next I tried booting from my Windows XP Re-installation CD to run a chkdisk but the CD could not find any hard drives and refused to run.
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It is possible your cables are bad. However I would flash the bios first, does not hurt anything. Get Aida32 it will read all the specs on your system.
You should be able to get the bios files from Dell.
If that does not solve the issue it could very well be a bad ide port on the mainboard.
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Did you check in the BIOS to verify that the IDE primary and secondary controllers are both enabled. It appears that your primary IDE controller isn't functioning properly. Try entering the BIOS and change the primary IDE settings to anything but where they are and save and exit then immediately reenter the BIOS and set bask to original settings, save and exit.
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The BIOS for the Dimension 2400 is pretty limited. I didn't see any mention of an IDE controller, but I did write down any settings that included drives or IDE:
IDE Drive UDMA .... On
Primary Master Drive .... Unknown Device (auto)
Primary Slave Drive .... Unknown Device (auto)
IDE Hard Drive Acoustics Mode .... BypassI changed the UDMA on and off and the acoustics to suggested, but nothing changed.
On another note, I booted up in Knoppix (Linux on a bootable CD) and was able to read/write to the primary master drive. I think this rules out any dead cables / ports.
I have flashed the BIOS, so I don't see how it could be a BIOS error. That only leads me to believe its some type of driver error. I'm kind of shooting in the dark here, if anyone else has any other ideas I would be glad to hear them.
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Well I got my computer up and working again. I just disconnected the Primary Slave drive (the one Knoppix couldn't see) and then put the BIOS option to OFF. The Primary Master is working great now. I'm going to test the Slave HD in another machine to see if its dead.
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