Winxp-Dell Good day. I added a 2nd hard drive (Not New) a week ago, since then (two times only) my puter couldnt go to the desktop. A black screen appeared & an error that said (primary drive 0 not found)F2 setup. I press F2 and I notice (Primary Master unknown)(Primary Slave Off)(secondary slave drive Off). Not knowing what todo i turned off & back on,this time i got to the desktop... Can someone give me some advice of what may be the problem or what todo. Thank you. Buddy

May be that a small jumper plug in the back of the drive should be removed, and plugged into the pins to set that drive as a SLAVE drive.

What kind of drive is this? SATA or PATA. Does both of your HDD show up in the bios ?

Hey Buddy One thing you can try is to make sure the jumper settings are set correctly. Make sure that your previous hard drive is set as the primary and the hard drive you added set as the secondary. Also, you mention that the hard drive added was not new. How sure are you that it is a good hard drive. Do you have any experience with going into the bios?

If these are IDE HDDs, put the 2nd HDD on the 2ndary channel.

Power off; remove power cord; open case; check that the jumper for each drive is set correctly and firmly inserted/in place. There are two ways to set drives; one is cable-select (CS) and the other is Master/Slave arrangement. You don't mix the two systems. In th CS system - Master drive is at end of ribbon; Slave in the middle. In the older EIDE/ATA approach... A drive is either: Master - no Slave; or Master with Slave; or Slave. Make sure you are using only one system and drive(s) positions and jumpers are correct - and that both jumper pins and ribbon/power connectors are firmly installed... http://www.pcguide.com/ref/hdd/if/i... and the next "page" discusses the two systems of installing drives. May be worth a look-see? If still no joy after the above checks... remove the second drive; reset original drive as it was previously (Master - no Slave - if using EIDE/ATA system; or ensure it is at the end of the ribbon if using CS system); reboot and verify it is still OK... Presuming it is OK... then possibly the second drive is faulty - if it "doesn't" show up in the bios... If it does show up in the bios, but you still can't see it via the installed OS (via Explorer or MyComputer) - post back...

a Scott Mueller Video. Configuring Devices >>>> http://www.informit.com/content/dow... . Central Coast NSW Aussie There are 10 types of people in this world: those who understand binary and those who don't.