com prob : primary HD disk 1 not found

[FishyMan]

I mean, the computer loads up and boots, but not with out first going through that screen.

I have no idea why.

This is after a reformat.

[accordaffair]

after bios? during?

windows boots? how many hard drives do you have?

are they IDE?

[FishyMan]

It's a dell
It has 1- DVD / 1 - CD/RW
I have IDE I believe. 1 Primary / 1 Slave (not yet installed)

I boot the computer, it shows that "DELL" screen and BIOS. then it takes a while and shows the black screen with the white text:
"primary hard disk drive 1 not found"
hit f1 to continue f12 to utility something

so i hit f1 and then it shows the WINDOWS XP screen and loads normally.

i took the bios battery chip out and restarted.
it did a systems' test and then said "system battery voltage low" or something like that, then "hit f1" and it loaded perfect.

what exactly is wrong?

all i did was swap in a bigger HD and reformatted it.

[FishyMan]

Actually after on/off CMOS battery, it seems fine.
However. The DVD that I install seems to crap out and freeze the computer whenever i try use it.

It came with a decoder card type of thing.

[accordaffair]

I'm not proficient with Dell Bios' but it often says something like that when you have a device set in bios but not plugged in.

For example:

I have (all IDE)
1 hard drive
1 cd-rom
1 dvd-rom

but in bios I told it I have a device at all 4 IDE locations

(each ide cable can connect 2 devices, one is set as master and one as slave x2 cables, primary and secondary = 4 devices)

The BIOS sees the first 3 but thinks you also have a 4th device because you told it this. It doesn't find it and reports back "No device found at etc"

But dell bios may recognize hard drives individually and when you removed the old one it got a bit upset, but it seems resetting your CMOS seemed to clear that up....


Anyway, on to the current issue

best I can say right now is to make sure its installed correctly. Get the manufacturers device drivers, if its from Dell (i.e. came with the computer) you can get them from Dell

One thing I do to all my computers is to go to

[Right click 'my computer' -> click properties -> click the advanced tab -> click settings under startup and recovery -> and make sure 'automatically restart' is unchecked under system failure

Now if and when the computer blue screens it will freeze at the blue screen and you can read what it says. Automatically reboot is useless to me, I need to know what the problem is. After it crashes, hopefully there will be some info under administrative tools -> event viewer that helps

[foamypirate]

The Dell computers at my school all do that crap...

[FishyMan]

The DVD which I transfered over comes with a 'decoder card'. The 'decoder card' connected to my Video Card.

So it was a 3 piece component.

So I was hoping to transfer these parts onto my NEWER DELL and it seemed that the VID Card would not work. So the connector cables between the decoder card hasn't fully been connected. I dunno if this is affecting the DVD PLAY.

[wed3k]

new hd...did you set the jumper on the HD for your settings?

[FishyMan]

Actually everything is fine. HOwever I can't seem to get teh OLD DVD ROM to work properly on the newer DELL. It won't play DVDs, like when it does, the screen craps out.

[npor]

THERES YOUR PROBLEM

Yuou sir

are using a dell

SYSTEMAX!!!!