Community Newsletter: Q&A: 3/10/06 Primary drive not found!
- 3/10/06 10:49 AM
Change the CMOS battery
by guberro - 3/10/06 8:02 AM In reply to: 3/10/06 Primary drive not found! by Marc Bennett
Change the CMOS before doing anything else!
Everything else stated here is useless until you do this FIRST.
Then read other suggestions!
Primary drive not found!
by Syeedur - 3/10/06 8:13 AM In reply to: 3/10/06 Primary drive not found! by Marc Bennett
Besides the BIOS there may be other problem here and the solution is simple. Your battery in the motherboard may be dead, so your BIOS cannot remember the changes you may make each time you boot the machine. If the BIOS change does not solve the problem, try a new battery.
If SATA one channel is on and looking for Drive.
by homeatlast - 3/10/06 9:59 AM In reply to: 3/10/06 Primary drive not found! by Marc Bennett
If SATA one channel is on and looking for Drive. When the channel is turned on the boot the system looks for that drive. Go to setup and then the Sata and turn off the channel that has no drive attached to it.
YOUR SOLUTION
by WW2PILT - 3/10/06 10:08 AM In reply to: 3/10/06 Primary drive not found! by Marc Bennett
Bravo, Miguel
Not only did you hit the bull's eye with your elegant English,
You also spared me the trouble and time of doing the same.
Best wishes,
murraygrainger1@yahoo.com
DELL.........
by jasonrodgers - 3/10/06 10:09 AM In reply to: 3/10/06 Primary drive not found! by Marc Bennett
Once you said you have a DELL that is your problem. No matter who's DELL computer I have worked on they have all be problems. This ranges from having to go back to DELL for certain parts, because they have not joined the 21st century. I would say that you should just scrap the DELL and go get someone to custom build you a new PC. Something that will out last, out preform, and and just plain out please you. DELL's are one of the worst PC's to have, right along with COMPAQ, and HP.
Got an ax to grind?
by ekent - 3/10/06 10:37 AM In reply to: DELL......... by jasonrodgersMost experienced computer users and IT professionals put Dell in a class above other brand names. Many people who, once upon a time, assembled their own PCs in pre-Pentium days now choose Dell over do-it-yourself hell. And there is nothing in a Dell that you can't replace or upgrade with over-the-counter parts. If you had actually worked on Dells like you claimed, you'd know this.
Of course, if you're a tinkerer and you enjoy troubleshooting more than actually working and playing on a computer, go ahead and put one together from scratch.
some Dell parts can be proprietary
by nem950 - 3/10/06 10:45 AM In reply to: Got an ax to grind? by ekentMost notably motherboards and Power supplies. I know of instances where the power supply, while having the industry standard connectors, had wiring in a different order than standard.
Really....
by slim-1 - 3/10/06 10:56 AM In reply to: Got an ax to grind? by ekentAnyone that would stop building their own for a Dell or any major brand PC/Laptop really has a problem.
All of them are a garbage heep of whatever they can get the cheapest.
And try to get real specs on what you are getting. You can't. It changes every 5 minutes.
Why do you think their support stinks. They have to look up the serial number before they even know what you have.
I you have to reformat and want to get the latest drivers they list an assortment of drivers and leave it to you to find the correct ones.
they = the following companies
Dell
HP
Compaq
Gateway
etc... any other major PC brand
No medium No wonder
by comicfan - 3/12/06 1:01 AM In reply to: Really.... by slim-1I see this argument a lot. Dell this , home built that. The facts are this, for some, a Dell or HP may be just what they need. Others, no way. My wife has an HP which is going on 5 years old and I upgraded it a bit and it runs fine. She has no problem with it and to be honest, HP support isn't that bad compared to some. Emachines, which I own one, has what I think, better pcs but the support is absolutely horrid. It would take me 50 pages to write about.
Sure someone like me may want to build his own pc, but many don't. I won't say that Dell, HP, etc...don't have their share of garbage because they do, but not all are. Also, there are a lot of horror stories about home builds also. Many times parts fry, and many times warranties are up the minute you touch the new part. There are downfalls to building your own pc which if you know your stuff, I need not explain. It's this simple,...some BUY a
NEW car... some CUSTOMIZE or REBUILD car....some buy a USED car.
If he does, dell gave it to him.
by cmblair - 3/14/06 1:28 AM In reply to: Got an ax to grind? by ekentDELL does not use all industry standard parts. Since around 98/99 they have used a nonstandard ATX power supply. They say it is because they do not want to compromise quality so they have their own standard with the wiring harness rearranged. Now you can always buy an adapter but that is hardly the point. Now apperantly they are starting to use the BTX standard, which while it is available everywhere, is certainly not the industry standard. Their motherboards are also not standard, nor are their cases. While he may have an axe to grind, Dell hands them out by using nonstandard parts. I was fixing a friends computer one time and the only thing that kept me from plugging his new motherboard (which had to be relocated to a new case because of the nonstandard configuration) was as i was checking his power supply i noticed the voltages were all wrong. Had I not noticed this I don't know what would have happened but putting 12v on the 5v rail can't be a good thing. But this is the norm for the industry as most manufacturers do this in one capacity or another. When I was really working on boxes from the major manufacturer's actually HP used mostly industry standard parts in their mid-high range pc's though but that could have changed.
As for the DIY/Dell debate:
While I always recommend people build there own (who doesn't know someone who is capable of doing so) money may not be the primary objective. The Asus MB, Hitachi hard drives (running in a RAID 0 array), ATI video card and the dual 12v rail Ultra 550w power supply that run in my machine all assure me that my system will run fine. I saved maybe 200-300 building it myself but I also got quality parts rather than revision 3A of a prefab system. I realize that this is perhaps beyond the scope of many users, but everyone has a friend who is knowledgable enough to make these choices. Still for some the warranty that Dell can provide may be reasuring but most electrical engineers will tell you that if something elecronic is going to fail because of a manufacturing defect it will fail in the first 30 hours of use. But if you don't know what is quality stuff, you may be better off with good old Michael building you a system.
Back to the origional issue though. Dell makes as good a prefab machine as any, but you can't just go plug something into them and know it will work. For example if you buy a new video card that has really steep power requirements you may end up having to upgrade your power supply and I just don't like the idea of putting 85 watts throgh a flimsy $.30 adapter that i bought online for 10 bucks. Then again if you are doing that you probably did build your own system. Wow we can go in circle's for days about this i guess. If you know enough to build your own I think you should. If you don't there are always places like this to ask questions should you have problems with your Dell/HP/Sony etc.
Mike
F1 Key on bootup
by rigelstuff - 3/10/06 10:27 AM In reply to: 3/10/06 Primary drive not found! by Marc Bennett
I have an old hard disk that is ready to fail...or so messages from operating system tellme on bootup.
So I have the same message every time I boot.
I supposed this is just to warn me to get ready for total system crash soon.
Jerry Ross
Don't shut off power to computer!
by wabjxo - 3/10/06 10:39 AM In reply to: 3/10/06 Primary drive not found! by Marc Bennett
I had a similar problem with BIOS and the clock on my computer. It started when I decided to turn off my equipment thru the main 6-way surge suppressor I had all the euipment plugged into.
After some time, the computer lost its time (I thought my clock battery was bad) and required an F1 due to BIOS error.
As soon as I kept the surge suppressor on and turned the computer off with its normal shutdown procedure, the clock regained time and no more BIOS errors!
Don't shut off power to computer
by 1bill - 3/10/06 9:00 PM In reply to: Don't shut off power to computer! by wabjxoDo not use surge protector to turn off computer
If you shut off the surge protector, to shut off
power, you will not have surge protection while
the surge protector is off
1bill
Primary Drive not found
by kingfyre - 3/10/06 10:50 AM In reply to: 3/10/06 Primary drive not found! by Marc Bennett
The problem may be as simple as this-Many Dell systems are shipped with the CS(cable select) jumper on the Hard Drive, even if only one drive was shipped with the system.Move the jumper to Master!
Dell Telephone Support
by sumojocky - 3/10/06 11:27 AM In reply to: 3/10/06 Primary drive not found! by Marc Bennett
This reply and some others critize Dell telephone support. I have used it a few times, have had no trouble understanding the male or female voice, and been very patient, and helpful. The only time they couldn't solve my problem was with my Axim X5 which was way out of warrantee, but they still tried to no avail to restore the X5. I will continue to use telephone support with no hesitation for my new XPS400.
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