Primary hard disk drive not found.

[atarndts]

I've read in a few posts throughout the web that address this problem.
However, so far they all address that the hard drive is probably toast.
Thinking this - I purchased a new hard drive ( for a Dell Inspiron
8100) purchased a new copy of windows xp (home) and formated the drive
and installed xp. But I still get "Primary hard disk drive not found.
Fixed optical drive not found. No bootable devices--strike F1 to retry
boot, F2 for setup utility." Now where do I go? Any ideas would be
greatly appreciated....

Thanks, Tom

 

[Pegasus \(MVP\)]

I've read in a few posts throughout the web that address this problem.
However, so far they all address that the hard drive is probably toast.
Thinking this - I purchased a new hard drive ( for a Dell Inspiron
8100) purchased a new copy of windows xp (home) and formated the drive
and installed xp. But I still get "Primary hard disk drive not found.
Fixed optical drive not found. No bootable devices--strike F1 to retry
boot, F2 for setup utility." Now where do I go? Any ideas would be
greatly appreciated....

Thanks, Tom

You write "... formatted the drive and installed xp". How can you format
a drive and install WinXP if the drives cannot be found?

 

[Rick \Nutcase\ Rogers]

Hi,

"Primary hard disk drive not found. Fixed optical drive not found."

Ok, so in the system BIOS are the CD and hard drives recognized and
enumerated?
Have you reseated the cabling?

--
Best of Luck,

Rick Rogers, aka "Nutcase" - Microsoft MVP

Associate Expert - WindowsXP Expert Zone

Windows help - www.rickrogers.org

 

[atarndts]

Exactly!!!! That's why I can't figure this out....
This absolutely does not make sense -yet that is the error message I'm
getting.
Glad to hear I'm not the only one who thinks this is strange....

 

[Malke]

I've read in a few posts throughout the web that address this problem.
However, so far they all address that the hard drive is probably
toast.
Thinking this - I purchased a new hard drive ( for a Dell Inspiron
8100) purchased a new copy of windows xp (home) and formated the drive
and installed xp. But I still get "Primary hard disk drive not found.
Fixed optical drive not found. No bootable devices--strike F1 to
retry
boot, F2 for setup utility." Now where do I go? Any ideas would be
greatly appreciated....

Thanks, Tom

What does Dell tech support say? I'd say the motherboard is toast and
that the issue wasn't the hard drive at all. But of course I don't know
what you did to determine that the drive was bad.

Malke

 

[Rick \Nutcase\ Rogers]

Disable any BIOS antivirus schemes, they may be interfering wihth setup's
ability to write to the boot sector.

--
Best of Luck,

Rick Rogers, aka "Nutcase" - Microsoft MVP

Associate Expert - WindowsXP Expert Zone

Windows help - www.rickrogers.org

 

[Guest]

Most Dell computers come with an IDE Diagnostic tool aaccessed from the boot
menu at Startup (F12, I think). This will return a code you can check in the
Dell forums, but will indicate Pass/Fail.
The resource CD will check every component, including the motherboard.

 

[Jonny]

To avoid assumptions, did you install XP while in the same computer that you
see these error messages?
Or did you install XP on this hard drive while in another computer?

 

[granjan]

Something very similar happened to my grandson's 6 mo old dell xps. I
stayed on line with Dell for several hours trying different things...finally
tech support came and replaced the hard drive...still didn't help. They
finally ended up replacing the mother board. Now all is well. Is your
computer still under warranty? If so, bug them to death til they do
something.