[Menzina]

Hello,
I’m hoping someone can help me with an old pc (Dell L433c) that was giving to me a couple of months ago. It was working fine until I decided to change the 20G HD that it came with, for a 40G HD and install a fresh copy of XP; I partition the drive using FAT32, not sure if it makes a difference. However, that’s when all of my problems started.

The pc wont boot, it gives me a error message that says ‘install a bootable media or No HDD found’ It use to say ‘Pri master drive not found’ but I don’t see it any more. I tried re-installing the old drive, but it doesn’t boot either. I then put both drives in another pc and it doesn’t work, I get the same message ‘NO HDD”

Both of the hard drives were working fine, they were scan for viruses and both came up clean. Right now I’m more concern about the files that I had on the disk instead of the pc itself. I have a program to retrieve the files if I can get it to boot. I’ve gone through all the protocols. I’ve checked all the cables and even changed them, I’ve reconfigure bios and nothing works.

Someone in another forum suggested downloading the drivers for the IDE/SATA and the motherboard, but it’s an old system and it’s hard to find. I found some drivers but I’m not sure if they’re the right ones. I don’t understand why the 20G HD will not boot in another system when it was working fine when I changed it. It should boot in another system running XP but it doesn’t !!!! I did something to this hard drive that’s messing up every system I put it in.

Here’s a list of everything I’ve done;
1…Change the IDE cables and made sure it’s connect where it’s suppose to.
2…Made sure all the settings are correct, including boot sequences (all orders)
3…I’ve set the bios to default setting and all other settings as well (auto)
4…I’ve tried loading raid drives and IDE drivers when installing fresh copy of XP
5…I’ve tried to boot with CDROM and floppy.
6…I’ve use different boot disks like The Ultimate boot disk (UBCD) and from bootdisk.com
7…I’ve tried installing windows 98, 2000, ME and XP
8…I’ve tried placing the HD jumpers in different positions, I’ve also tried no jumpers
9…I’ve tried using different HD’s and none will boot with this system


HELP…PLEASE, ANYONE !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Thanks in advance
Menzina

[zerocool]

Sounds like the on board ide controller on the motherboard has decided to AWOL, I have encountered something simular to this with an older system I was playing around with and it was caused when I plugged a harddrive in to a motherboard and had attached the ribbon cable the wrong way round and it blew the ide controller and the harddrive controller to.

[Menzina]

Originally Posted by zerocool Sounds like the on board ide controller on the motherboard has decided to AWOL, I have encountered something simular to this with an older system I was playing around with and it was caused when I plugged a harddrive in to a motherboard and had attached the ribbon cable the wrong way round and it blew the ide controller and the harddrive controller to.

Did you ever fix it?
Is it even fixable?

Thanks for responding........

[zerocool]

I did fix it, used an ide pci card and a new hard drive

[Axegrinder]

Another thing, why are you using FAT32, that is old technology, NTFS is much better, unless you are dual booting with 98/me, FAT32 is the only option.

[Menzina]

Originally Posted by Axegrinder Another thing, why are you using FAT32, that is old technology, NTFS is much better, unless you are dual booting with 98/me, FAT32 is the only option.

When I was trying to install a fresh copy of XP and needed to format the drive, it wasn't exceptling the normal way so I tried it with FAT and it when through, but then it crashed and It hasn't worked since.