Booting up problem - Dell Dimension

Dodge · 10 Oct 2007 at 19:21

I have inherited a Dell Dimension 4550 PC. Fairly low spec, P4 2.66 (533mhz) 265mb ram, Nvidia 420 AGP graphics and a 60gb Hdd.

On booting i get a message "cannot find primary disk drive Press F1 to continue or F2 for setup utility" If I press F1 it boots OK no problem. Assuming it may be a duff hard drive I changed it for a known good one, and loaded XP with no trouble, until it had to reboot and the same message came up. I have checked the BIOS and the drive is correctly identified, as it the memory. I have also changed the boot sequence but to no avail.

I cannot identify the motherboard, although it may be an Intel board, its smaller than a normal ATX board and only has two memory slots. Lovely build quality.

My hope was to use this as a home server, as it appears to be whisper quiet.

Any ideas would be most grateful

Dodge

Indy500 · 10 Oct 2007 at 19:23

Its set up as primary master right? Assuming its IDE.

Yewen · 10 Oct 2007 at 19:23

Is the hdd installed as the primary master on the first IDE port, had this issue with a old system and it was because I had the HDD installed on the wrong IDE channel for the boot drive.

Dodge · 10 Oct 2007 at 19:26

Hi Chaps, that was quick!!!

Yes its the primary master on IDE 1. I have heard that Dell PC's tend to be a little 'odd' and use non standard drivers\hardware.

Indy500 · 10 Oct 2007 at 19:27

Dodge said:
Hi Chaps, that was quick!!!

Yes its the primary master on IDE 1. I have heard that Dell PC's tend to be a little 'odd' and use non standard drivers\hardware.

Other than the lack of an AGP slot on some motherboards, no.

Yewen · 10 Oct 2007 at 19:27

Exactly the case.

Have you tried phoning dell?

Their support even for machines out of warranty can be quite good and there may be a very easy fix they are aware of.

Im out of ideas at that im afraid, unless something has gone faulty as it is a fairly old machine as they go.