Drive not ready-System halted

[paz8473]

Drive not ready-System halted

This is all I get when We try to boot up my fiance's computer, it was fine yesterday, the machine in question is a Compaq 5000 series running win XP home, 1.4ghz p4.

I have switched the CMOS battery with one from another PC but this didn't help, it will boot to the setup screen after I pull the battery for a few minutes, but once I set the date, save and exit, it goes right to the black screen and I get the Drive not ready-system halted message again, if more info is needed I will be checking back here now and then and try to provide whatever information is requested to help solve this problem.

I am not a professional PC tech, but I have been working on and troubleshooting PC's for at least 10-15 years, this is the first time I have seen this happen, any ideas or suggestions regarding this problem will be much appreciated.

Thanks.

 

[ski]

A few things to check:

-Make sure all cable connections are secure and proper(red or blue or gray stripe along the one edge of the IDE cable is next to the power cable on the back of the HD, and next to pin 1 at the MB connector).

-Confirm that the HD spins up during startup. If it's not spinning up, then connect a different power lead to it. If it's still not spinning up, then it has probably died.

-If it's spinning up, then install a different known working IDE cable.

-Run a diagnostic test at the HD manuf's site.

-Disable 'Quick Boot', 'Quick Power-On Self Test', or similar in BIOS.

-Disconnect all drives except the boot drive. If this fixes things, then the power supply may not have adequate output for all of the drives.

-Connect boot drive to secondary controller. If this fixes the problem, then the primary controller may be bad.