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General discussion

HELP!! Primary Hard Disk Drive Failure on a BRAND NEW drive!

Dec 29, 2006 8:40AM PST

The hard drive that was in this computer failed, so I replaced it with a larger 160GB one and finally got the computer to recognize it. It actually took quite a while for the computer to boot up due to the fact that the computer just refused to recognize the hdd. The weird thing is that now it starts up to DOS after a little while and says "Primary drive 1 not found Secondary drive 1 not found Strike the F1 key to continue, F2 to run the setup utility." Now, this is not a huge problem because if you just hit F1, Windows starts up fine and I am able to utilize the harddrive. I am just wondering if there is a solution to this or if F1 will have to be hit every time upon bootup. Thank you for your help!

oh also--some more info: This is a Dell Dimension 4600 running the A12 BIOS. There is no slave on the IDE cable--only the primary hdd. It is parallel ata. Let me know if you need to know anything else and I can find it for you.

Thanks in advance!

Discussion is locked

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If you tell the system there's a secondary drive ...it'll
Dec 29, 2006 10:38AM PST

'look for it' until it finally gives up as "not found' and goes on to the next peripheral. The key is turn off drives ...HDDs and CDs, not present.

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exactly
Dec 29, 2006 3:22PM PST

That did the trick. The unused drives (or where they would be) needed to be turned to off in the system BIOS. Thanks!

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(NT) Good to hear...thanks for the feedback !
Dec 29, 2006 11:27PM PST
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wow you guys rock my technical knowldge.
Jan 6, 2007 3:38PM PST

no really. im on geek squad and I was trying to figure out how to fix the damn f1 key fantom problme, and killing the second drive that wasn't really there worked!!! thanks a bunch and keep up the great tips!