HELP!! Primary Hard Disk Failure on a brand new drive!!

[jonline]

The hard drive that was in this computer failed, so I replaced it with a larger 160GB one and finally got the computer to recognize it. It actually took quite a while for the computer to boot up due to the fact that the computer just refused to recognize the hdd. The weird thing is that now it starts up to DOS after a little while and says "Primary drive 1 not found Secondary drive 1 not found Strike the F1 key to continue, F2 to run the setup utility." Now, this is not a huge problem because if you just hit F1, Windows starts up fine and I am able to utilize the harddrive. I am just wondering if there is a solution to this or if F1 will have to be hit every time upon bootup. Thank you for your help!

 

[LA1]

What PC model or mainboard model is this in ? Do you just have only the HD on the primary IDE cable ? is it a PATA or SATA hd ?

 

[jonline]

This is a Dell Dimension 4600 running the A12 BIOS. There is no slave on the IDE cable--only the primary hdd. It is parallel ata. Let me know if you need to know anything else and I can find it for you. Thanks in advance!

 

[LA1]

It probably is the power supply. Some older Dells have proprietary power supplies, yours I think is a pent 4 about 2.8ghz ? so maybe an oem power supply may work, it also could be something else
try clearing the cmos, make sure the power is off when you do it.

 

[jonline]

Problem solved. Apparently a setting needed to be changed to turn off all slaves in the BIOS. Thanks for your help.