Hard Drive Error (by 4 users)

I was having the same problem a couple days ago. I took the hard drive out and put it into my other computer as a slave and then formatted the drive with windows then put it back into  the first computer then it wanted to work fine. Be sure and set first boot as the cd rom, second boot as ide and third boot as floppy if you are using any.

I believe the problem is that windows does not have the correct HD controller driver by default. Therefore, it never load the driver for the controller and the HD is not seen.

usually see this on scsi controllers, but i have seen it on a few newer SATA HD controllers.

Windows 2000 is bad about that. Reformat your drive and try again.

you need to use a format disk and clean and reformat your disk first before you try and load the operating system. Then you may need to press del or f2 after booting to go into the bios and set the cd rom to first boot, you may have to change it several times as you format with a floppy startup disk first

i would suggest to try a BIOS reset without a harddrive pluged in, you schould find 2jumpers on the motherboard just plug the green plastic down and plug it on the other one back (on the one where no plastic is) make this withouth power added to the system,then make the setting with the jumper back and plug the hdd in,afther a start will the bios go to a routine to scan the ide ports.

This sounds like an issue with the BIOS rather than your hard drive if you are able to boot into Windows. Or do you mean that the PC boots to the windows install?

What is the exact error and at what point in the boot process are you seeing it?

The BIOS handles the the initial startup of your computer, before Windows is even accessed on the hard drive.

If you can boot into windows, then try downloading the latest BIOS from Dell support and upgrade your bios.

If you cannot boot into windows, and the PC is just going to the Install CD, then there may be a problem with the connection to the hard drive. If you have tried different hard drives in the same PC, then try swapping out the cable that connects the hard drive to the motherboard. If different cables do not solve the problem, then the problem may lie with the connector on the motherboard. If thats the case, then the entire motherboard will need to be replaced.

Also try downloading the following CD to run diagnostics on your hard drive. This should provide further information as to what is wrong with your system:

http://www.ultimatebootcd.com/