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XP doesn't recognize drive at boot-up

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by treborsnikwad

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Hello,
I just recent added a Western Digital 250 gb internal hard drive to my Dell 8300 (XP SP2 with Pentium 4 and 2 GB RAM) at work, and now when I try to start it, it goes to a black screen, beeps twice, and tells me it can't read the primary hard drive (or something similar...I'm not at the PC right now). It then tells me to hit F1 to continue (which it does), or F2 to enter the boot menu...I replaces the 40-pin cable, but to no avail...is it a case of the BIOS battery being low, or is the boot sequence out of whack? It never did that before I changed the drive....
Thanks,
Rob
(PS...this site is GREAT!)

7 replies

by ic-it

If this is a storage drive and not the primary boot drive, then it needs to be on the middle connector of the Primary IDE cable or on the Secondary IDE chain. If it is in the middle, double check the jumper settins on this and the original drive.
Hopefully you replaced a 80 pin cable with an 80 pin cable.

by treborsnikwad

I originally added it as the primary boot drive, so I could have a clean install for XP SP2; I put it on the black (end) connector, and plugged my old drive into the grey secondary (middle)connector...when I turned the PC on, I got the same beeps and the same message above. I went ahead and booted with F1 to install Windows, hoping the PC would iron itself out, but to no avail. I also left the jumpers on "cable select", as the manual instructed.
Yesterday, hoping-beyond-hope that things would revert back to the normal, peaceful state that I was familiar with BEFORE I tried to "improve" things, I removed both drives and swapped places, putting the old drive back as primary and the 250 gig in as secondary, but it STILL does the same thing...I'm totally bumfuzzled...I thought I read in my my manual that it was a 40-pin cable?
Thanks,
Rob

by tg2

don't futz with cable select, set your drives master and slave, that way nothing "fun" can happen

40 pins per ide connector, newer drives are 80 wire compatible. To increase speeds to the drive when using a parallel cable (look closely, most drive cables are flat, and all those lines are parallel to each other) the parallel cable allowed cross talk, so they found that by using an 80 wire cable, they could ground every other wire, and help isolate the 40 pins to acheive faster speeds.

Some cables are even better, in that they do each pair into twisted pair like cat-3 (cat-3 and hanger) ethernet cables.

your motherboard would need to be known as supporting 66 or 100 meg IDE. If they do, then you really should use a 40pin 80wire ribbon cable for your drives.

by treborsnikwad

So, an 80 wire cable may solve the problem? Are those available through a retail outlet (like Radio Shack)? I will check my motherboard specs tomorrow to see if it supports either of those 2 IDE configurations...and I'll be back with an update!
Rob

by ic-it

use the manufacturer's utilities to copy the original drive to the new drive?
If so then the original drive may be marked as inactive.
If not then once your drives are discovered use that disk to accomplish this. You can also check within the BIOS (Setup) to see if they are properly discovered there.

by treborsnikwad

Well...I replaced the cable with a HD 80 wire, but no dice...I called Dell tech support, and after some testing, found the mobo to be screwed...oh well, the boss said "to hell with it", and bought a new PC today...

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