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Question

Drives BIOS recognized, but, not in boot order, pc no boot

Nov 14, 2012 1:56PM PST

I'm trying to help a friend with a PC. It's Dell PC, it was powered on and working.

Next thing he knew, it was giving him some message about a secondary boot drive, and press F1 to continue or F2 to enter setup.

If we go into F2, It can identify Drive 0, SATA 1 as the primary hard drive, but, cannot determine the size, It can see Drive 1, SATA 2 as an 80 Gig, and it can see the PATA drive as a CD-ROM drive.

Then, if we go into Boot Order, it shows SATA drive 1 (not present) SATA drive 2 (not present) CD-ROM drive (not present).

We tried to clear the BIOS and start over, it auto detected all 3 drives, same error on the first drive, it could not determine the size, but, returned to the very same error condition.

If I remove the first drive, it will boot to the 80 Gig drive, but, will still show the CD-ROM drive as NOT PRESENT.

Any ideas as to what might be going on?

Thanks in advance.

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