No hard drive?

A used old minitower.

First run, P133, the bootup screen says:

Primary Master Drive: None

Secondary Master Drive: CD Rom drive....

Insert system disk....

Not an expert here, but this looks like no hard drive?

TIA

ms wrote:

A used old minitower.

First run, P133, the bootup screen says:

Primary Master Drive: None

Secondary Master Drive: CD Rom drive....

Insert system disk....

Not an expert here, but this looks like no hard drive?


Yes, or the CMOS batteries are empty, and he has forgotten what type of
harddisk it has. Enter BIOS setup, and find a utility 'Hard disk
detection'.

Set primary master to Auto in the BIOS, and if the BIOS setup has an IDE
Autodetection option , use it.
Post back with your results.

If it still shows nothing on the primary after that, then either there is nothing
there, or one of the cables is unplugged (either data or power) or defective, or the
drive connected to primary is bad, or the controller is bad.
--
Glen Ventura, MS MVP Shell/User, A+
http://dts-l.org/goodpost.htm


"ms" wrote in message ...
A used old minitower.

First run, P133, the bootup screen says:

Primary Master Drive: None

Secondary Master Drive: CD Rom drive....

Insert system disk....

Not an expert here, but this looks like no hard drive?

TIA

"glee" wrote in
:

Set primary master to Auto in the BIOS, and if the BIOS setup has an
IDE Autodetection option , use it.
Post back with your results.

If it still shows nothing on the primary after that, then either there
is nothing there, or one of the cables is unplugged (either data or
power) or defective, or the drive connected to primary is bad, or the
controller is bad.

First, I set to IDE autodetect, all the numbers for primary master hard
drive data came up 0's.

I went back one step to Standard BIOS Setup (Award Bios)
It shows today's date, battery OK ?

Primary Master
User: Size cyl heads precomp loadz sector mode
1282 2484 16 65535 2403 63 auto

does this suggest a hard drive is present?
what size?

basic memory 640 k
extended memory 31744 k
other memory 384 k

this suggests 32 MB RAM?

If the hard drive is present, how to detect it?

BTW, if battery is OK, so CMOS is OK, why typically did it not detect
hard drive on bootup.

Thanks

when selling a pc a quick n dirty way to clean the drive is to use fdisk to
delete all partition information, the bios sees the drive but there are no
volumes on it to boot from
(It doesnt work the information is still able to be read by recovery
software but that wasnt the point of this post)
use fdisk on a floppy boot disk to check and repartition the drive

--
-
Adaware http://www.lavasoft.de
spybot http://security.kolla.de
AVG free antivirus http://www.grisoft.com
Etrust/Vet/CA.online Antivirus scan
http://www3.ca.com/securityadvisor/virusinfo/scan.aspx
Panda online AntiVirus scan http://www.activescan.com
Panda online AntiSpyware Scan
http://www.pandasoftware.com/virus_info/spyware/test/
Catalog of removal tools (1)
http://www.pandasoftware.com/download/utilities/
Catalog of removal tools (2)
http://www3.ca.com/securityadvisor/n...aspx?CID=40387
Trouble Shooting guide to Windows http://mvps.org/winhelp2002/
Blocking Unwanted Parasites with a Hosts file
http://mvps.org/winhelp2002/hosts.htm
Cool Web Shredder http://www.trendmicro.com/cwshredder/
links provided as a courtesy, read all instructions on the pages before
use
Grateful thanks to the authors/webmasters
_
"ms" wrote in message ...
"glee" wrote in
:

Set primary master to Auto in the BIOS, and if the BIOS setup has an
IDE Autodetection option , use it.
Post back with your results.

If it still shows nothing on the primary after that, then either there
is nothing there, or one of the cables is unplugged (either data or
power) or defective, or the drive connected to primary is bad, or the
controller is bad.

First, I set to IDE autodetect, all the numbers for primary master hard
drive data came up 0's.

I went back one step to Standard BIOS Setup (Award Bios)
It shows today's date, battery OK ?

Primary Master
User: Size cyl heads precomp loadz sector mode
1282 2484 16 65535 2403 63 auto

does this suggest a hard drive is present?
what size?

basic memory 640 k
extended memory 31744 k
other memory 384 k

this suggests 32 MB RAM?

If the hard drive is present, how to detect it?

BTW, if battery is OK, so CMOS is OK, why typically did it not detect
hard drive on bootup.

Thanks

"ms" wrote in message ...


First, I set to IDE autodetect, all the numbers for primary master hard
drive data came up 0's.

That means there's no hard drive detected. Time to make a physical check
inside the box. Is there a hard drive? Is it properly connected, power and
data cables? Is it properly jumpered?

I went back one step to Standard BIOS Setup (Award Bios)
It shows today's date, battery OK ?

I don't understand the phrase "back one step". Today's date is a good sign
but it's not necessarily conclusive. It simply indicates that the CMOS
battery is probably OK and that the BIOS is at least minimally functional.
It's a very long shot, but the BIOS might still be corrupted. (I'm being
theoretical here. It's *waaay* down the list of things to worry about, close
to last place.)

Primary Master
User: Size cyl heads precomp loadz sector mode
1282 2484 16 65535 2403 63 auto

does this suggest a hard drive is present?
what size?

No, it suggests that those numbers are either what was previously manually
configured or that it's the BIOS default. *If* there is a drive present, and
*if* it's the same one that was previously installed when those
configuration settings were entered, those numbers *might* be correct. But
the above "autodetect" test indicates that there is no drive detected. You
can't just ignore that fact, it's irrefutable. The downside of leaving those
settings in place is that if the drive actually has an operating system
installed and you boot with incorrect HDD configuration, it could royally
mess up the file system and more. Leaving BIOS at "autodetect" causes the
system to take a bit longer to boot, but it is *much* safer.

basic memory 640 k
extended memory 31744 k
other memory 384 k

this suggests 32 MB RAM?

Yes, that's what's being detected. There might be more installed and not
being detected, but bad or loosly installed RAM normally prompts an error.

If the hard drive is present, how to detect it?

Like Glen said, if the hard drive is actually present, the fact that it's
not detected means that something else is wrong. Data cable bad or
disconnected, power cable bad or disconnected, wrong jumpering
(Master/Slave/CS), bad controller on mobo or HDD is dead.

BTW, if battery is OK, so CMOS is OK, why typically did it not detect
hard drive on bootup.

You've asked the same question four or more times in varying ways. The
answers are above. Actually, the answers are in Glen's first reply to you.

--
Gary S. Terhune
MS MVP Shell/User

Trying what you suggest is worthless if the drive(s) aren't being detected
by BIOS. You're getting way ahead of the game.

--
Gary S. Terhune
MS MVP Shell/User

"AlmostBob" wrote in message
...
when selling a pc a quick n dirty way to clean the drive is to use fdisk
to
delete all partition information, the bios sees the drive but there are no
volumes on it to boot from
(It doesnt work the information is still able to be read by recovery
software but that wasnt the point of this post)
use fdisk on a floppy boot disk to check and repartition the drive

--
-
Adaware http://www.lavasoft.de
spybot http://security.kolla.de
AVG free antivirus http://www.grisoft.com
Etrust/Vet/CA.online Antivirus scan
http://www3.ca.com/securityadvisor/virusinfo/scan.aspx
Panda online AntiVirus scan http://www.activescan.com
Panda online AntiSpyware Scan
http://www.pandasoftware.com/virus_info/spyware/test/
Catalog of removal tools (1)
http://www.pandasoftware.com/download/utilities/
Catalog of removal tools (2)
http://www3.ca.com/securityadvisor/n...aspx?CID=40387
Trouble Shooting guide to Windows http://mvps.org/winhelp2002/
Blocking Unwanted Parasites with a Hosts file
http://mvps.org/winhelp2002/hosts.htm
Cool Web Shredder http://www.trendmicro.com/cwshredder/
links provided as a courtesy, read all instructions on the pages before
use
Grateful thanks to the authors/webmasters
_
"ms" wrote in message
...
"glee" wrote in
:

Set primary master to Auto in the BIOS, and if the BIOS setup has an
IDE Autodetection option , use it.
Post back with your results.

If it still shows nothing on the primary after that, then either there
is nothing there, or one of the cables is unplugged (either data or
power) or defective, or the drive connected to primary is bad, or the
controller is bad.

First, I set to IDE autodetect, all the numbers for primary master hard
drive data came up 0's.

I went back one step to Standard BIOS Setup (Award Bios)
It shows today's date, battery OK ?

Primary Master
User: Size cyl heads precomp loadz sector mode
1282 2484 16 65535 2403 63 auto

does this suggest a hard drive is present?
what size?

basic memory 640 k
extended memory 31744 k
other memory 384 k

this suggests 32 MB RAM?

If the hard drive is present, how to detect it?

BTW, if battery is OK, so CMOS is OK, why typically did it not detect
hard drive on bootup.

Thanks

"AlmostBob" wrote in
:

when selling a pc a quick n dirty way to clean the drive is to use
fdisk to delete all partition information, the bios sees the drive but
there are no volumes on it to boot from
(It doesnt work the information is still able to be read by recovery
software but that wasnt the point of this post)
use fdisk on a floppy boot disk to check and repartition the drive


I understand the above. The history on this one puzzles me.

The fellow built it himself for his daughter, years ago. Later, he
developed dimentia, so can't recall what he did. His wife gave it to me,
she does not know computers, back then it didn't sound like he wanted to
get rid of it. I would expect it just sat for years and now was surplus.

But I sure don't detect an OS on it.

Depending upon what glee answers, will then put in a DOS 6.22 disk and
fdisk. I've formatted before, but partitioning will be an adventure for
me.

ms

Attached is an FDisk tutorial.

--
Regards


Ron Badour, MS MVP for W98
Tips: http://home.satx.rr.com/badour
Knowledge Base Info:
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?pr=kbinfo



"ms" wrote in message ...
"AlmostBob" wrote in
:

when selling a pc a quick n dirty way to clean the drive is to use
fdisk to delete all partition information, the bios sees the drive but
there are no volumes on it to boot from
(It doesnt work the information is still able to be read by recovery
software but that wasnt the point of this post)
use fdisk on a floppy boot disk to check and repartition the drive


I understand the above. The history on this one puzzles me.

The fellow built it himself for his daughter, years ago. Later, he
developed dimentia, so can't recall what he did. His wife gave it to me,
she does not know computers, back then it didn't sound like he wanted to
get rid of it. I would expect it just sat for years and now was surplus.

But I sure don't detect an OS on it.

Depending upon what glee answers, will then put in a DOS 6.22 disk and
fdisk. I've formatted before, but partitioning will be an adventure for
me.

ms

QUESTION: Do you have any experience with hardware at all? Have you ever
been inside a case, installed/replaced new hardware, etc.? If not, there are
some basic do's and don'ts. For example, you want to make sure to ground
yourself, if not with a proper grounding wrist strap, then at least make
sure that the *first* thing you touch is the metal frame of the case --
grasp it really well, and make sure that anytime your hands go elsewhere, to
find a screwdriver, to pick up a device for installation, etc., that you
again ground yourself to the frame before even coming close to touching the
innards. The reason for this precaution is static electricity. It doesn't
take much to screw up some component on the motherboard, you might not even
notice a spark. I often roll up my sleeves and sort of "lay" one arm on the
frame while I'm working, if I'm working without a strap (which I usually am,
bad boy!)

If your board is very old, and yours just might be, then the way the IDE
(HDD/CDROM) cables plug in might not be obvious. The connector(s) may not
have any slot & key arrangement to make sure it's plugged in the right way.
If that's the case, then you need to determine which pin on the motherboard
connector is pin #1 (you may even have to find a schematic for the mobo.)
Likewise, you need to make sure which hole on the cable connector is #1
(it's usually indicated by a red wire on the cable.) Same goes for the HDD
connectors. Make certain pin #1 goes into hole #1.

The hard drive may now be set to "cable select" where the position on the
IDE cable determines whether the drive is Master or Slave. I prefer not to
use Cable Select, but rather to force Master or Slave as needed, using the
jumpers on the drive. If that's not possible, then the *middle* connector on
the cable is for the Master drive. See
http://www.pcguide.com/ref/hdd/if/ide/confCS-c.html

--
Gary S. Terhune
MS MVP Shell/User

"ms" wrote in message ...
"glee" wrote in
:

Set primary master to Auto in the BIOS, and if the BIOS setup has an
IDE Autodetection option , use it.
Post back with your results.

If it still shows nothing on the primary after that, then either there
is nothing there, or one of the cables is unplugged (either data or
power) or defective, or the drive connected to primary is bad, or the
controller is bad.

First, I set to IDE autodetect, all the numbers for primary master hard
drive data came up 0's.

I went back one step to Standard BIOS Setup (Award Bios)
It shows today's date, battery OK ?

Primary Master
User: Size cyl heads precomp loadz sector mode
1282 2484 16 65535 2403 63 auto

does this suggest a hard drive is present?
what size?

basic memory 640 k
extended memory 31744 k
other memory 384 k

this suggests 32 MB RAM?

If the hard drive is present, how to detect it?

BTW, if battery is OK, so CMOS is OK, why typically did it not detect
hard drive on bootup.

Thanks