Hard Drive Boot up Problem

[Guest]

Just before July Fourth I started receiving this message on my Dell dimension
4300
with XP proffessional on it.
My system originally arrived with a western digital 40 gig harddrive.


"Secondary harddiskdrive not found
Warning: Dell's disk monitoring system has detected that drive 1 on the
primary
EIDE controller is operating outside of normal specifications. It is
advisable to immediately back up your data and replace your harddisk drive by
calling your support desk or dell computer corporation."


I added a second wetern digital 40 gig harddisk drive about four years ago
and put windows 2000 on that drive

The computer recognizes windows xp and windows 2000 as being two operating
systems but only allows me to actually boot off xp 2000 wich is fine.

I just store other different programs on windows 2000 for extra storage.

What I tried to do to correct this problem:

For a while after this message was showing up every time I would boot up the
system would show press "F1" to boot or "F2" to use cd utility. I would press
"F1" and the computer would boot and all things would be normal.
In the boot sequence in my BIOS I would choose "c" drive, but I would still
receive the above message.

Eventually "F1" no longer worked for me and the computer would not get past
the boot process.

As of July fourth I backed up all of my "C" drive onto my "D" drive then
tried to do a repair on my "C" drive using my exhisting cd rom xp pro
provided with my dell choosing the "F2" command.

To no luck I eventually reformatted my "C" drive and after formatting was
completed I received the same message and I was to press "F1" on my keyboard.

I purchased a new Wetern Digital 120 gig harddisk drive and even put in the
new cable that came with the drive wich was identical to the cable that came
with the Dell computer for attatching both drives to system, I set the new
drive for master using jumbers on back of harddrive and set the windows 2000
40 gig to slave.

In XP you can set the jumpers on both harddrives for the same and it will
automatically notice both drives, but I switched the jumpers since
automatically detecting drive was still giving me the problem message listed
above even with the new drive formatted for xp pro.

Presently every time I boot up the computer I receive the same problem
message, I press "F1" and have to boot off of the cd rom that was originally
supplied with my dell computer.


Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Thank You in advance,

Dan

 

[Michael T]

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[Sharon F]

Just before July Fourth I started receiving this message on my Dell dimension
4300
with XP proffessional on it.
My system originally arrived with a western digital 40 gig harddrive.


"Secondary harddiskdrive not found
Warning: Dell's disk monitoring system has detected that drive 1 on the
primary
EIDE controller is operating outside of normal specifications. It is
advisable to immediately back up your data and replace your harddisk drive by
calling your support desk or dell computer corporation."


I added a second wetern digital 40 gig harddisk drive about four years ago
and put windows 2000 on that drive

The computer recognizes windows xp and windows 2000 as being two operating
systems but only allows me to actually boot off xp 2000 wich is fine.

I just store other different programs on windows 2000 for extra storage.

What I tried to do to correct this problem:

For a while after this message was showing up every time I would boot up the
system would show press "F1" to boot or "F2" to use cd utility. I would press
"F1" and the computer would boot and all things would be normal.
In the boot sequence in my BIOS I would choose "c" drive, but I would still
receive the above message.

Eventually "F1" no longer worked for me and the computer would not get past
the boot process.

As of July fourth I backed up all of my "C" drive onto my "D" drive then
tried to do a repair on my "C" drive using my exhisting cd rom xp pro
provided with my dell choosing the "F2" command.

To no luck I eventually reformatted my "C" drive and after formatting was
completed I received the same message and I was to press "F1" on my keyboard.

I purchased a new Wetern Digital 120 gig harddisk drive and even put in the
new cable that came with the drive wich was identical to the cable that came
with the Dell computer for attatching both drives to system, I set the new
drive for master using jumbers on back of harddrive and set the windows 2000
40 gig to slave.

In XP you can set the jumpers on both harddrives for the same and it will
automatically notice both drives, but I switched the jumpers since
automatically detecting drive was still giving me the problem message listed
above even with the new drive formatted for xp pro.

Presently every time I boot up the computer I receive the same problem
message, I press "F1" and have to boot off of the cd rom that was originally
supplied with my dell computer.


Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Thank You in advance,

Dan

Sounds to me like you replaced the wrong hard drive. Disk 1 is the
secondary drive on a single controller. Disk 0 is the primary (master). Are
you sure the older Win2000 drive isnt' the one that is failing?

Jumper position is a hardware configuration. The system looks for a
bootable partition on the master drive first. If that fails, most will
check other partitions. Then the boot process get passed to the operating
system designated by the boot files located in the bootable partition (the
operating system itself could be on another partition entirely).

I have no idea how you managed to run two masters off of the same
controller all of this time. Controllers that are configured for cable
select determine master/slave by the position of the drive on the IDE
cable. Perhaps that came into the picture somehow.

 

[Guest]

Sharon ,

You are correct I should have worded that better. Originally both hardrives
were set up for cable select and that is how I was originally running my
system with the xp pro loaded hard drive being the first drive on the cable.

As Western digital stated in their directions, the black plugin of the cable
was the main drive and the gray plugin was for the secondary drive wich is
the way I plugged the drive in.

I think I will try disconnecting my secondary drive to see what happens with
the boot up process.

Thank you again.

 

[Guest]

Thank You Michael,

I think I will try that.

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