I just installed a new WD 80gig 7200 HD and when I boot up, the BIOS sequence is interrupted and it says their is no primary drive to boot off of. I have to options, F1 to continue, or F2 to go into Bios setup. All settings are correct, switched ide cables, and tried different jumper settings, as well as flashed the BIOS, but still same problem. Weird thing is, is that if I hit F1 to continue, it will boot into the XP like nothing happened... Any suggestions are appreciated, Thanks

You have no hard drive to boot from. Your essential items may be in RAMBIOS (computer ram memory). I would switch back and leave well enough alone. Your hard drive may be exceeding the capicity of your BIOS. If this is the case there are several 'cures', they all take time and money. You have to determine if it is worth possibly changing the BIOS to a newer model to accomodate the larger drive or use an overlay. I think it is obsolecence showing its face. Stick with what works. As the saying goes, "Less is more".

Thanks for the input.. But, I'm confused..what items in RAMBIOS?..you would switch back to what? And I have the most current BIOS for my dimension 8100, so I dunno.. Sorry i need clarification, i'm a bit of a newbie at this.. Thanks

Matt, when you installed your new HD, how did you fdisk it? The simplest way is to create one large partition (the whole drive in this case), and you must designate it as PRIMARY and ACTIVE in fdisk, and then format it with whatever file structure you choose, FAT32 or NTFS. If you don't designate it as Primary, the computer won't know what drive to go to to boot your OS. I know that sounds crazy since you only have one HD, but the reason is that this enables you to have multiple partitions and Operating Systems on one HD. For Example, I am set up as a dual boot with XP and WIN98 off the same HD, and I added a second slave drive for additional storage and formatted it with FAT32 because XP cans read FAT32, so both OSs can read & write to it. I wouldn't be able to do this without telling Windows which Drive contains the boot record and is therefore the Primary.

I first used the Win XP CD to partition the whole drive as the primary drive with NTFS..Then I tried using the Western Digital floppy to make sure the BIOS had the correct settings for the drive (which it did anyway) and format a small boot partition in FAT32, the proceeded to use the Win XP CD to install OS on 1 partition..but still got same error...Never tried using FDISK though. Strange thing happened when I put in a 10gig hard drive and made it Slave to the problematic 80gig hard drive...It booted up without any errors!? Its like it needs to be in a Master/Slave setup..which I wouldn't have a problem with except that the 10 gig is a 5400rpm drive and the 80gig is a 7200, so won't that slow down the 7200 drive since they are on the same IDE cable? Thanks for the continuing help...

Western Digital said to go into BIOS and enter USER instead of Auto Detect..I heard this can mess up the hard drive?\. Is this true?

RE: different RPMs: No, nothing will slow down because both HDDs are on the same data cable, so only one HD at a time can access. So the different speeds will not interfere with each other. What you are referring to is the Cardinal Sin of connecting a HD to a CDROM drive; that would produce the effect you are speaking of, big time. As to the other problem, I am not too clear on why you set up a small FAT32 partition if you are running XP or 2000, but it sounds like your system isn't glitching on boot, but waiting for you to tell it to boot; not being in front of your machine is difficult, but the problem can't be too serious if the unit boots with the slave drive...