# Primary hard disk drive not found



## Gatekeeper (Jun 2, 2001)

My dell laptop started not booting up. It will go to the dell startup screen and then goes black and displays the following text.

"Primary hard disk drive not found
Fixed optical disk drive not found

No bootable drives"

I tried booting the windows xp cd after changing bios setting to boot cd first and failed. I did get the computer to boot last night after it had been set in its case for 2 months when I got tired of messing with it and it worked fine I let it hibernate.When I went to start it up today it is back to the original error.
I know I'm probably over looking something. Any help would be great let me know what extra info you need. Thanks


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## Gatekeeper (Jun 2, 2001)

Any help here???


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## ~Candy~ (Jan 27, 2001)

Does the bios see the hard drive?

Actually, a better place for this is probably hardware.

I've moved it.


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## saikee (Jun 11, 2004)

How old is the laptop? A hard disk has a finite life. It can't run forever. If it starts to go then it can refuse to talk to the PC which will then report "primary disk not found".

I would commence the operation to have its content transferred whenever it boots again.


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## crjdriver (Jan 2, 2001)

Since it did not find either the hd or the optical drive, I would think the controller has failed. It is hard to have two drives die at the same time. You can pull the hd and slave it to another system using an adapter. This will allow you to transfer any important data.


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## ~Candy~ (Jan 27, 2001)

I'm thinking about the possibility of a cmos battery failing?

And it's forgettting it has drives?


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## crjdriver (Jan 2, 2001)

Unless the default setting is something other than auto, that should not really matter. The disk would be found unless the default was a manually entered parameter.


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## crjdriver (Jan 2, 2001)

Gatekeeper can you boot the system and enter the bios? 

See if it shows something other than auto for each ide channel.


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## saikee (Jun 11, 2004)

The "not-found" slave optical drive did bother me but there are old computers that do not boot a slave and old CD rom drive may have a problem to function properly whe jumpered as a slave but suddenly without a master. 

Modern equipment does not have such a problem.


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## Gatekeeper (Jun 2, 2001)

Yes I can boot to bios. I will check when I get home.

Thanks


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## crjdriver (Jan 2, 2001)

I will be gone for a few days [going to work and I have to work 4 days this week am I mad] so someone else will have to help you out.


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## ~Candy~ (Jan 27, 2001)

Hey, now, I'm flying into Reno tomorrow crj


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## crjdriver (Jan 2, 2001)

I leave on the 07:00 flight in the morning. I will be back on Sun around 12:00


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## ~Candy~ (Jan 27, 2001)

I leave on a SW flight on 9/6 in the early afternoon.


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## ClariceSnail (Sep 4, 2005)

This same thing happened to my dell inspiron two days ago. I found a site (Bay Wolf's Inspiron & Latitude Hard Drive FAQ) that said this: 

"Why does a primary hard disk drive failure affect the CDROM? I'm getting this error: Primary Hard Drive not found. Optical Drive not found.

A: The configuration is the internal HDD is the Master on the Primary IDE bus, the fixed optical drive is the Slave on the Primary IDE bus, the Media Bay device is the Master on the Secondary IDE Bus. Pull the HDD and nothing will work.

 The error occurs when either the HDD or optical drive becomes half connected to its connector. That locks up the bus and the BIOS reports both failed. Reseat one or both of the drives. The Inspiron cases flex too much because of the loose palm rest "feature". "

I haven't tried this yet but I am optimistic since this happened once before and because my CD drive did work once to run the diagnostic CD, but then stopped working again.


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## Flashback (Oct 14, 1999)

Just found this thread. Dell has a very long *12* page thread regarding this issue with countless people complaining about the error message. Dell finally closed the tread with no solutions. Figures  Anyway if anyone has any ideas, no matter how slim, we'd all appreciate it. My original help thread regarding this matter can be found here. Thank you.


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