Primary hard disk drive 0, f1 or f2 to restart

[Tech bud]

Hi, just wondering on if my assumption that the motherboard might be bad on this PC. Background on the computer I don't know much about because I just had 4 computers dumped on me by Brother in law so I could get practice.

I first fired up the computer an it stated Primary hard disk drive 0 not found, f1 or f2 to restart. So my first thought was hard drive, I seen in BIOS that the hard drive was not being seen, so I taken the hard drive out and tried it in a working computer. It fired up to the windows loading screen, then it would restart, which is further then it would go in the other PC. I put in a known working hard drive in the original PC.

It is being recognized by the BIOS and sometimes will make it to the windows loading screen then restart.

Other things I have tried:
Tried a new IDE cable
Changed CMOS ram battery
tested power supply, read that it might be the problem with a search, that's good.

note: I did find that the processor heat sink was loose at one time, put it back on tight. Plus I don't have extra ram to swap out and only one stick...

Going to try and reformat the possible bad hard drive and see if it will install in the working PC, but does this sound like a bad motherboard/processor?

 

[Rob_NNCC]

IDE? Usually I would say this is TOO OLD for a repair. As you are using this for practice however...

Sounds like the Original HDD in the Original PC was not connected correctly, or is incompatible with that PC. I would also check the jumpers on the drive to make sure it is being recognized as Master with no other devices on the IDE bus to mess up the detection. (two master devices on one bus would cause issues)

Second, the hard drive you installed in the original pc is not from a highly similar pc is it? Try running foolishtech's FIXIDE or run the ultimate boot cd for win's FIXHDC. This will reset the hard drive controller's drivers for windows as windows on the new drive thinks that it is still trying to load drivers that would work on the old pc.


This does not sound like a bad motherboard. I would:

Try the old hard drive with the PC, with nothing else on the IDE bus, setting the jumper on the drive to MASTER. If it is not being detected by the BIOS then the drive is bad or the mobo is not compatible with this Hard drive (or the IDE cable is bad, the HDD could be bad, or something else...)

Keep it up, the more you try to work with your parts, the more you will be ready for clients computers.

 

[HFultzjr]

Hi, just wondering on if my assumption that the motherboard might be bad on this PC. Background on the computer I don't know much about because I just had 4 computers dumped on me by Brother in law so I could get practice.

I first fired up the computer an it stated Primary hard disk drive 0 not found, f1 or f2 to restart. So my first thought was hard drive, I seen in BIOS that the hard drive was not being seen, so I taken the hard drive out and tried it in a working computer. It fired up to the windows loading screen, then it would restart, which is further then it would go in the other PC. I put in a known working hard drive in the original PC.

It is being recognized by the BIOS and sometimes will make it to the windows loading screen then restart.

Other things I have tried:
Tried a new IDE cable
Changed CMOS ram battery
tested power supply, read that it might be the problem with a search, that's good.

note: I did find that the processor heat sink was loose at one time, put it back on tight. Plus I don't have extra ram to swap out and only one stick...

Going to try and reformat the possible bad hard drive and see if it will install in the working PC, but does this sound like a bad motherboard/processor?

Try and see if the computer will boot and run from a live cd without the hard drive installed.

Using a live cd, you can test ram, hard drive, etc.

If everything checks out ok, most likely not the motherboard or cpu.

 

[Tech bud]

I did notice that there was no jumper on the hard drive after I had posted, I tried using a jumper from a cd drive, still didn't work, not sure if there interchangeable or not. Not much experience with IDE stuff, but sick today going to take a nap, then try out the suggestions and report back if they work. Thanks!

 

[Disposable_Me]

When there is no jumper, IDE will use whatever connection the IDE is plugged into as it's designation (ie: the outside connector is master, int he middle connector is slave)

Have you tried checking if you have RAID in the bios? Throw it into combination mode.

If the HDD's not being detected in the bios, then there's no point checking with Knoppix or some other Linux distro's live cd. I would use a known good HDD (It just has to be detected in the bios) with a known good cable.

If no raid, and new parts don't work, then it's probably a controller issue and I'd call it a bad mobo.

Are you sure that the IDE ports are enabled in "Integrated Peripherals" or a similar menu?

 

[RobertH]

check bios for auto setting for HDD parameters

I have an old single board system on the bench.

In it s bios settings for harddisk parameters I usually need to select automatic, due to the fct that it occassionally forgets the other settings.

 

[Rob_NNCC]

Jumpers are interchangeable, as long as they are the right size. Every manufacturer had different positions for jumpers, and some even had different locations for the jumper packs on the drives. You need to look at the location.

ALSO-Some Western Digital drives would not allow detection if you manually put the jumper on master, you had to let it be master by having no jumpers.

 

[Tech bud]

Feel like a dummie..

Alright been trying to figure out why this dang thing will not boot to a cd, it's so ancient it can't read dvds...will get back to you all...lol

 

[jcitron]

Alright been trying to figure out why this dang thing will not boot to a cd, it's so ancient it can't read dvds...will get back to you all...lol

There's no reason to feel like a dummy. This is all part of the learning experience. The only thing that distinguishes a so-called expert from everyone else is an "expert" doesn't admit in public that they make mistakes.

You're going down the right road with this.

Remember always check the easy stuff first before going for the esoteric things that are beyond imaginable, or on the fringe of being weird. Sometimes we run into those, but those are far and few between. The old adage of KISS works perfectly as a technician. It's usually the stupid easy stuff that fixes the problem in 99.999% of the cases. It's those other 0.0001% that will drive us batty.

This very well maybe a bad motherboard, since the other computer did recognize the hard drive and tried to boot from it.

Good luck and keep at it.

John

 

[Altster]

Alright been trying to figure out why this dang thing will not boot to a cd, it's so ancient it can't read dvds...will get back to you all...lol

I work on / with a lot of the older equipment (IDE, etc.). Don't get down on yourself - it takes time to learn how to do diagnostics at the beginning.

Can I assume that this computer has a DVD-ROM drive installed? If not, it won't read a DVD disc. If the computer has more than 1 ROM drive installed, remove both of them and set the jumper on one of the ROM drives from "CS" (Cable Select) to Master and try booting from that drive (using a compatible CD or DVD.) If you have a "known-good" DVD-ROM drive that is of the same interface then try using that drive to see if it will read the DVD.

Something to help you along your journey -

Always try to make the problem as simple as possible. Remove any connections that are not needed to make the computer work (hard to do with a laptop but easy to do with a desktop). Remove any board that is not necessary to the computer's start-up. (I once had a bad modem kill the computer and once it was removed the computer would boot.)

Just take your time and remember above all else - Google is a great tool for finding information about almost anything.

May the force be with you.

 

[brandonkick]

Great advice here.


When troubleshooting a computer always start from the bare essentials:

Power Supply
Processor
Motherboard
Memory
Keyboard
System/Processor Fan

You need nothing else for the machine to power on and go into the bios screen.

I have seen many many things cause people lots of issues, very strange things.

I've seen CDRW/DVDRW drives that stop a machine from booting.
I've seen a bad PCI 56K modem cause weird crashes on another machine.
I've seen memory sticks cause crazy boot issues.
I've seen mouse and keyboards (that work fine with other machines) cause systems to fail to boot or allow you to reinstall an operating system (I think it was windows XP that this mouse and keyboard kept crashing while I was trying to reinstall windows XP).

So when working on a system disconnect or remove anything you don't NEED for the machine to function. If the machine then functions you can try reconnecting components one at a time until your problem returns. If you add another part and the problem returns, you can pretty safely assume the last part you added caused the problem.

Sounds like the original hard drive might be flaking out on you. I would try a known working drive connected as the master drive on the primary channel with nothing else hooked to the PC. If it boots into the BIOS and the BIOS recoginizes the drive then power down and connect a IDE DVDRW drive as the master drive on the secondary channel.

At this point you should be able format and install an operating system on the drive. If this fails then I would connect a DVDRW drive as the master drive on the primary channel and insert a "live" operating system disk. You can download live linux disks that will run the OS entirely off of the DVD. If this fails then I would say bad motherboard (or bad IDE cable/ IDE drive.... but those are very unlikely).