Dell Dimension 4600 - Hard Drive Replacement

[JPotting27]

I am working on a computer for a guy here at work. The 160 GB SATA HDD originally in his Dell Dimension 4600 was deemed "bad" by the computer place he took it to. Consequently, they kept the hard drive and I am replacing it with a 320 GB SATA HDD, and keep getting the following message when the system is turned on:

Primary drive 1 not found
Secondary Drive 0 not found
Secondary drive 1 not found
Strike the F1 key to continue, F2 to run the setup utility

I am able to get into the setup utility and make changes, but I'm not sure what I may need to change. All I want to do is install a copy of Windows XP Professional, which I have.

I have placed this disk in the CDR drive, hoping to boot from disk, but have been unable to get to that point. Can anyone please help me?

 

[BadBigBen]

You probably need to activate the SATA controller in the BIOS, as it sounds like the IDE controller is reporting that no drives are attached...

Ben

"If it works don't fix it! If it doesn't use a sledgehammer..."

 

[Freestone]

It looks as if at least Primary Drive 0 is being detected, so I suspect that is an IDE CD or DVD drive. Look in BIOS for something labeled similar to Boot Order and ensure that the CD or DVD ROM drive is listed prior to any SATA hard drive(s).

 

[JPotting27]

Thanks for the tips guys. I've ensured that the SATA drive is listed after the IDE DVD drive, but I'm still getting this error. Any other ideas?

 

[BadBigBen]

1. Try another SATA port, cable, and power plug... the last two just to rule out problems with bad cable and power...

2. set the SATA ports to LEGACY MODE or sometimes called IDE Compatible or just COMPATIBLE... this fools windows into thinking they are IDE drives and then you wont need drivers on a floppy for the install...

3. check the BOOT order of the devices... it would help knowing what type of DVD (CD-ROM) is installed, ergo is it SATA or is it IDE? Probably IDE from the error message, and the ODD is on the Primary controller...

4. goes along with 3, check the cables and plug it into the secondary controller... make sure that the IDE controller is active in the BIOS setup...



Ben

"If it works don't fix it! If it doesn't use a sledgehammer..."

 

[cdoloriert]

I found a solution for this, you need to play around with the order of drives. In my case I set the SATA off SATA 2 off, only the HD and CD drive on and it worked fine. You might have to restart a few times to make sure this works, but it should be ok. I didn't need any cables in my case and if it works before it should work after. I also tried to update the BIOS, but it didn't work cause the settings in the BIOS work independently of the update.


I hope this helps.