# primary HDC failure



## hbch (Jun 16, 2000)

I recently got an old but complete pc from work without the HD. This pc worked fine (90Mhz)at work but I brought it home and installed an old 2.1 HD with Win98 but I cannot get it to boot up. Everything came with the pc including the mouse. This thing had NT 4.0 installed at work and it worked fine with the exception of being kind of slow. I get this error message "primary HDC failure, press F1 to RESUME" What is this? I tried playing with the bios and still nothing. It has American Megatrends AMIBIOS 1994. I press F1 adn I get "Drive not ready" Insert BOOT disk in A: Press any key when ready. I do and I get the same dam thing. What's going on here. I am not able to boot to the A: drive or anything. Please help.

thanks


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## Bubu (Sep 24, 2000)

I just went through this same issue. You may need to make a new boot disk. Make sure you "lock out the tab". Is your Bios set to: "Boot from A: first"?


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## hbch (Jun 16, 2000)

Yes, but I already tried different boot disks and my system is not reading the floopy drive so that is not working. And yes, I do have the system reading the drive. I am at a loss here as to what it could possibly be because this system was working fine with NT 4 on it. All I did was just change out the HD.

Thanks


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## jmatt (Apr 7, 2000)

Go to the Hard Drive manufacturers site & download the free utility that most have , to help you get your HD the way you want .
Hit the pause button during Boot up , you can then read the Make & Model of your HD .

Maxtor's is called MaxBlast ,
Seagate's is DiscWizard ,
Quantum's is DiskManager ,
IBM have a selection , 
Fujitsu's is OnTrack DiskGo ,
Western Digital's is Data lifeguard Tools .

Here are those brand sites , http://www.maxtor.com/products/DiamondMax/software/maxblast/index.html http://www.seagate.com/support/disc/drivers/discwiz_utilities.html http://service.quantum.com/softsource/disk_docs/dm2000.htm http://www.storage.ibm.com/techsup/hddtech/welcome.htm http://www.fcpa.com/cgi-bin/goFrames.cgi/support/su_drivers.html http://www.wdc.com/service/ftp/drives.html#dlgtools

Also this utility may also help .
http://www.geocities.com/prestonlewis/

Data Recovery.Zip ( Freeware )

Repairs hard drive damage from virus, fdisk problems, formatting mistakes, power failures and application errors. For FAT16 or FAT32.


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## ETS (Oct 13, 1999)

What brand is the drive?
How do you have it cabled and jumpered?
Primary channel? Cable oriented correctly?
Master/slave settings?
What is your boot sequence set to in CMOS?


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## tward (Feb 23, 1999)

A BIOS that old may not be able to recognize a 2.1Gb hard drive. The limit may be 528Mb without a BIOS update or drive overlay software. First you need to get into SETUP and have the BIOS detect the new hard drive. If it can "see" it as a 2.1Gb, you should be OK. Remember though, even if it does work, the hard drive will have all the settings and drivers for the PC that it came from. This will likely cause many problems.


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## are (Sep 1, 2000)

I must not be asking the question in the right way. First, I know the HD is good (I have Win98 installed on it) and the bios is set to read it. Second, the HD is set to master and I have the boot up sequense to read A then C. Third, I know this pc worked fine before because NT 4.0 was installed on it and I got it from work because it was replaced with a new pc. I got everything except the HD so nothing else is different on this pc other than the hd. I know old systems have older bioses that may not be able to read larger HD's but sometimes you can get away with using easybios to enable it to read larger than 2.1 gig HD's. My problem is I am not able to get this thing to boot to the floppy because I get some error. I forget the message but I do get two quick beeps before the error. I will post the exact error message later when I get home. I Still I see no reason that it's not reading the floppy. Any other suggestions would be appreciated.


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## ETS (Oct 13, 1999)

Can you disconnect the hd and then boot the floopy?

[This message has been edited by ETS (edited 09-25-2000).]


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## hbch (Jun 16, 2000)

No I cannot boot the pc without the HD connected.


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## ETS (Oct 13, 1999)

Then you have another problem, not related to the hard drive. It's likely something was knocked loose when you changed out the HD. 2 beeps sometimes indicates a memory error.
I would re-seat the memory modules, drive cables and expansion cards and try again.


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## hbch (Jun 16, 2000)

I changed everything out and reset all the cards and memory but I am still getting the same error. I am getting the floppy to read but for some reason now my pc wont even start. Incidently, this happened right after I got it to read from the floppy. I will have to change out the power button (push button) in the next few days and see if I get anywhere after that. I will post the results then. Thanks for all the input so far...


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