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Hard Disk Failure
Name: Rick Date: April 2, 1999 at 18:58:30 Pacific
Comment:
Last night everything was computing just fine. This morning I boot up and receive "primary hard disk failure" and "secondary hard disk failur" messages. The boot screen stops after testing memory and verifying the cd drive. Unfortunatly I had been backing up to my secondary hard disk. What could have caused this so suddenly? I checked the power supply and ribbon cable connectors but no change. Any help appreciated.
Sometimes computers like to do these things to us to test us out, go into your CMOS/BIOS setup at startup and hit 'DEL' when prompted and choose 'Standard CMOS Setup' or 'Auto-Detect HDD' these will show your HDD settings then press 'ESC' to exit that page and then select 'Save and Exit' answer 'Y' and your system will reboot, if doesn't fix it let's know.
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Response Number 2
Name: Bruce Date: April 2, 1999 at 19:40:20 Pacific
Reply:
This page has a step by step troubleshooter that might help with that problem. http://dictacomm.com/Errors/Default.htm Do you have two HD's or one with partitions? Hard for two HD's to die at once. Could be the power supply, it has seperate power for the motherboard/HD. Put the cdrom power cable on the HD and try it. Check the BIOS setup to see if the settings have or were changed. Is it a Western Digital HD? Should post more information on your system, and what you did last before you shut down.
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Response Number 3
Name: Rick Date: April 3, 1999 at 04:34:08 Pacific
Reply:
I did the cmos routine and it did auto recognize the two hard disks. I am running two hard disks: a 4.3g Samsung and a 340mb Western Digital. THe power supply is less than 2 mo old and is 350 watt. About 2weeks ago I reformatted the 4.3 Samsung as one primary partition and loaded the full version of win98. Seemed to be working fine. I will check the trouble shooter site you recommend. Thanks. Any other suggestions...I'm open.
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Response Number 4
Name: Anon Date: April 3, 1999 at 05:26:00 Pacific
Reply:
I've heard that there is a major flaw with windows 98, it has "Microsoft" at the start of it and should be deleted.
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Response Number 5
Name: Isaac Date: April 26, 1999 at 18:44:02 Pacific
Reply:
My hard disk is unable to spin even with the power attached to it properly, what went wrong?
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Response Number 6
Name: Fred Nadela Date: May 13, 1999 at 02:12:28 Pacific
Reply:
I have two Seagate hard disks connected to the primary channel. This has been running with no problem for over a year. Several months ago I connected a 36X CD rom as slave on the secondary channel. This has been running smoothly for several months although I sometimes get the message "primary slave hard disk fail" which was not much a big deal since everything seems okay after I reset the system. Lately, this problem has become persistent. and often times i can not boot the slave hard drive. And even if i can, the system will lock up when i access the drive. I am running win 95. And during the times that i can access the slave drive, scan disk shows no sign of data loss as if nothing is the matter with it. Help anybody please...
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Response Number 7
Name: DaveTheRave Date: August 2, 1999 at 20:42:31 Pacific
Reply:
This one has got me! On booting after the Win95 screen appears it goes straight to "it is ok to switch off etc." Will not read from drive A when I switch off then on. I have accessed A drive by round about means and it tells me I have no fixed disks! Recently replaced motherboard after a lightning strike but it has run ok for over a month. Any ideas would be welcome.
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Response Number 8
Name: Derek Morrey Date: July 12, 2000 at 15:58:13 Pacific
Reply:
with windows 95/98/nt if you just turn off the hard disk ass opposed to shutting down. Does that potentially damage the hard drive in any way. And is there written documentation, if so, where.
The system is a 120 mghz pentium system. Initial HDD was only 200 MB. I bought a new samsung 6.4 HDD ( which I will later partition). All connections seem to be correct(Yes I made one master and one slave) I keep getting Primary hard disk failure. CMOS does not auto detect either system asks me for a SYS BOOT disk which I do not have. Would appreciate much a quick response as it is my friends PC THANK YOU FOR YOUR TIME osi
I have a problem too! My hard disk won't work when i disconnect the power supply, but it will work when the power supply is connected! Getting my drift?????
Summary: I seem to occasionally get a Primary Hard Disk Failure when I boot up. I only seem to be able to boot back to Windows if I physically switch off the PC as the off switch on the PC acts like a reset bu...
Summary: Quite often when I try to start up the computer it say Primary Hard disk failure and the darn thing won't turn on. I had the cable replaced (Dad thought it was faulty) but this didn't help. It freeze...
Summary: Hello, Whenever I boot up my PC I get the message "PRIMARY HARD DISK FAILURE". i go to BIOS setup and detect the drive, then reboot my PC - this time I get the message "INVALID SYSTEM DISK, PLEASE REP...
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