Re: DELL 2400 P4 (AO5)

Have you changed the motherboard battery? It's a little silver disk
battery. Sounds like it is losing its settings. The 2400 would be at
least 5 years old.

Bet that fixes it.

-----Original Message-----
From: Mikie [mailto:mppg1@xxxxxxx]
Posted At: Sunday, September 06, 2009 2:14 PM
Posted To: alt.sys.pc-clone.dell
Conversation: DELL 2400 P4 (AO5)
Subject: DELL 2400 P4 (AO5)

I booted up one day, and got the dreaded, "Cannot find primary drive -
Click F1... Or Click F2 for an assistance type page. For some
weird reason, when I USED TO click F!, it would boot, Now after F!,
another error message reads 'Disk Read Error', click CTRL ALT DEL to
reboot. Around and around we go? I ran the HDD Diagnostic App on
F2....all HDD's did OK!!

So I swapped in a few spare HDD's one by one...same thing...Disk Read
Error.

At times, I tried the F12 Assist page "Cannot Find Primary Drive
and Cannot Find Secondary Drive. Hey, the LONE HDD installed had no
settings at all for SLAVE or Cable Select, no pins installed at all.
Where does it get that "Secondary drive" notation??? Could be the
'outside- the-case SATA USB drive which was on accidebtally when I
boot?
Iswapped in every available power plug, on each HDD , I tried the
HDD;s installed in the case, or just resting on the base of the case
to assure groundingnd no shorting

Finally I had hunch! MY USB out-side-the case SATA DRIVE was on!!
(It should never have been ON in the first place but sometimes my
brain rebels), so I turned it off , Suddenly, this hard drive booted
after the F1 and here I am. I want to get help before this doesn't
work next time...sata drive or no, so I am using this drive to ask for
help.

Not being a techie, I find it difficult to explain and put things to
words; this is my problem, and all to often, many other folks, , Also
my PC is my only contact to the outside world, because I'm 82, and
limited financially and physically, and I panic...without a PC. I
don't expect you to solve my problem...just please...throw a few hints
my way IN CASE the next of the three HDD's doesn't Boot as this one
did.

Many many thanks for any clue, hunch, even guess.]

Michael PP

.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: Colour settings
    ... What I mean by losing the settings is that I usually find that the ... windows then no probs, however, if I unplug after shutdown and leave ... The motherboard battery does not remember your color settings. ... MS-MVP Windows - Shell/User ...
    (microsoft.public.windowsxp.basics)
  • Re: bios password
    ... Pull out the motherboard battery and leave it out for a while. ... That will reset everything on the BIOS to its defaults. ... You may have to reset several of the settings there, ...
    (microsoft.public.windowsxp.general)