computer won't load; hard drive missing!?!

  • Thread starter Thread starter amat
  • Start date Start date
A

amat

when i first turn on my computer, and it goes on through
the memory tests, or what not, it gets to showing the
primary, secondary master and primary, secondary slaves.
and it looks something like this...
primary master : none
secondary master : none
primary slaves : 50X CD ROM
secondary slaves : none
the problem is that it doesn't go anywhere after this-the
screen just freezes...

the couple of times it got past the scree above, and i
acctually got to boot with the win 2k cd, it worked fine
until the screen where i have to choose one of 1)
installing a new version of win 2k, 2) repairing an older
version of win 2k, or 3) quit setup. when i try either 1)
or 2), it tells me it can't do either because it can't
find the hard drive.

any suggestions on how i can get my computer to work?

please, help, and thanks in advance.
 
so what do i do to fix these problems:
a) cabling problem
b) dead hard drive
c) sick motherboard
 
Since you ask this question, I understand that you are not familiar with
computer hardware and suggest you take it to a shop to have it repaired.
 
any suggestions/ideas at all?


-----Original Message-----
Since you ask this question, I understand that you are not familiar with
computer hardware and suggest you take it to a shop to have it repaired.


.
Click to expand...
 
There is a lot of missing information. Does it have a SCSI or an IDE
hard drive? Were you (or anyone else) inside the computer doing stuff
(e.g., installing some new hardware) and then it wasn't working when you
turned it on again? Was it dead out of the box? Did you turn it on one
day and it just wouldn't boot? (If it's dead out of the box new, just
take it to where you bought it and have them fix it.)

Assuming you walked up and turned it on one day and it didn't boot,
something failed inside it or it got bumped and a cable or card
dislodged. You could try opening up the case and seeing if anything was
obviously amiss like a card half out of a socket or a cable not inserted
completely. If you were fooling around inside it, then you could start
by figuring out what you might have broken when you were working.

There is nothing magical about the innards of a PC and it's already
broken so if you have free time and a desire to know more about what's
inside the case you can take this as a learning experience. If it just
stopped working and you don't know of anything in particular that could
have happened to it, troubleshooting it is going to require some spare
components that you know work. Try hooking a known-good drive with a
known-good cable to the IDE controller (take the existing drive/cable
off) and see if it finds the drive. If it doesn't, you have a bad
controller or cable. If it does, the existing drive or cable is bad.
I'm going to assume you have enough native intelligence to figure out how
to distinguish between a bad drive and bad cable given a good drive and a
good cable.

If you don't have a known-good drive/cable and nothing seems out of place
or you have little interest in poking around with the hardware you might
as well have someone who is experienced try to fix it.

-Bill Asher
 
u probably just have to update the bios, and the
controller card you can get the drivers from your pc
manufacturer
 
assuming nothing at all changed - the PC was running fine, you turned it
off, you turned it on, and BIOS sdtarted giving you odd messages &
things didn't work right, then you certainly have a component failure
inside the box. Check all cables and connections everywhere and make
sure they are firmly seated. Check drive jumpers; they may have fallen
off. Make sure every card (RAM and device cards) is firmly seated; best
you remove/reinsert them, or at least press them down firmly. Drives do
fail, sometimes suddenly, sometimes partially, sometimes slowly and
progressively. If you can boot W2k at some point, go through Device
Manager and Event Viewer carefully looking for clues. Most likely you
will find and cure the problem by doing the above. If none of the above
gives satisfaction, your recourse is to find an experienced friend or a
repair shop. With luck, the above will cost you only time. You'll need a
screwdriver, lots of patience, and running shoes so you can hop around
every few minutes and see if it boots yet.
 
hey, thanks to all that responded with adive for my
problem... if anyone else has any other ideas, fell free
to let me know.
 
If your primary master is a hard drive greater than 32.8Gb, this could be a
BIOS problem. Is it?

Adrian
 
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