I have no clue how this happened but all of the sudden when i boot up i get an error stating that the secondary drive 0 is not found. my cd-rom and cd-burner are not listed in my computer any more. I checked my bios and it shows Primary master: Hard drive Primary slave: off Secondary Master: unkn secondary slave: off Ide (whatever) : on can someone please help me? Kami

If you have just installed XP Look Here, it may help. If not; repost with more details about your unit. How long has it been running good? Have you recently installed some new hardware? Have you recently removed something? Anything you can think of may help us help you.

It has been working great. I bought it new in October 2003. I have not installed any new hardware or programs in about 4 months. I have not removed anything either. It was working fine 2 days ago and all of the sudden it just rebooted itself and the cd-rom and cd burner were lost. it is a Dell pentium(r) 4 2.19ghz 256 mb of ram i am running microsoft xp home edition service pack 2 Kami

From my desk I am just guessing, however, from what you have just said it sounds like you have lost an IDE Channel. Sometimes from over heating or a power surge or a drop (sharp bang) one or more of the canister shaped capacitors get fried. You can actually see the ends are rounded instead of flat. If you look at your motherboard, you may be able to see the black canister looking things. You'll be able to see if the bottom is rounded or flat. I suggest you call Dell Tech Support and explain what has happened. They may ask you to send that unit back for repairs.