Primary Master disk fails!

[Septimius]

Hi!

After using my computer in the current configuration for two years now I suddenly get the following error message and the comp. will not boot : Primary master disk fails. It happened after a crash of my TNT 2 driver related to OpenGL while starting medal of honour.

Hardware: Maxtor 30Gb DiamondMax.
MB Asus P3v4x: via 4-1 version 4.27
CPU PIII 800 EB
Win XP pro
VGA: Viper 770 TNT 2.

I have tried all i could think of:

HDD scan with CHKDSK and MAXTOR tool: no errors found.
Virusscan (bootsector): no virus.
Full format and repartitioning (was needed anyway).
Rewrite bootsector: FDISK /mbr
Reflash BIOS to 1005.
Still the same message!!

The odd thing is that my drive will work properly on another comp. and another HDD works ok on my computer!!!

How can there be a conflict while the same configuration worked for 2 years now??

Can anyone help me?

Regards Tom from Amsterdam.

 

[mistanapesis]

I would go in to the BIOS (usually DEL key) as its booting and check to see if its detecting the hard drive. I had this problem myself and I discovered it was the seating of the drive cable. Try unplugging it and putting it back or swap it for another cable. I ended up buying a new cable even although the original was less than 6 months old. If your unsure....Dont do it!

 

[ianstar]

Sounds like you have done a pretty comprehensive job to me.
The H/D swap is the real head masher. I'll give it some thought and try to get back to you.

 

[Guest_imported]

hey if you know the Cylinder/Head/Sector combination of your hard drive, go into your bios and set those paramaters manually, sometimes that will help. Also if you have a DMA mode set up higher than the drive can handle then you will get that message too. I got that trying to set a DMA mode of 5 on a drive that would only handle DMA 2, try disabling ULTRA DMA for that drive, see what happens. Try another IDE channel?? Let me know what you find

 

[FatesWebb]

if your using fast boot you can disable that, also if your bios has a setting for precomp on the hdd settings maybee raise it. this is the timeout value for the hdd init. FatesWebb

if you do what I suggested it is not my fault...