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Anonymous Posted on Mar 24, 2011

Two 8100 towers. One will detect hard drive, one will not.

  • Anonymous Mar 24, 2011

    Sorry did not help. In addition to this more issues came up. For #1, I installed one of the 4 new/used hdds. Attempted OS load. Hdd was detected, "HARD DRIVE" in primary 0. CD got as far as "DLL FILE CANNOT BE COPIED". I first tried to start the process again, got to the same point and then "HARD ERROR". tried a different copy. Same results. The remaining 3 drives gave me "HARD ERROR" directly after CD loaded its files. My only solution I think is to try to load the OS using a working tower. Then install the hdd into the spare and see if it works. I do not really want to do this for fear that the existing hdd will no longer work in the tower it came from, and/or the PREPARED hdd will still not work in either or both of my intended back ups. Any more ideas?

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Brian Sullivan

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  • Dell Master 27,725 Answers
  • Posted on Mar 24, 2011
Brian Sullivan
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One bad lead can cause a computer to continue on a cycle or to shutdown or fail to detect your hard drive

Test all leads that attach to your hard drive including electrical extensions,IDE,SATA

the leads from your ((motherboard to your hard drive)) make sure they have a secure connection and are not faulty or just replace them there probably old and faulty
make sure all leads that are attached to your drives dvd\cd 3 1/2 inch floppy have secure connections and are not faulty even the electic extensions or just replace them they are probably faulty a computer needs its connections to have an end so any faulty leads will end up with a computer error hope this helps

  • 4 more comments 
  • Brian Sullivan
    Brian Sullivan Mar 25, 2011

    http://majorgeeks.com/download.php?det=5...
    you will have to burn it to a disk as an ISO
    UBCD4Win is a bootable CD which contains software that allows you to repair, restore, or diagnose almost any computer problem note you will have to boot from the disc hope this will help you

  • Anonymous Mar 25, 2011

    Thanks for trying. I have no idea as to how to burn anything to a cd. My towers are set up with a cd writer and dvd rom NOT a dvd burner. For #1 which DOES detect the hdd, can I use the ASR console? The issue is that I am TRYING to LOAD the OS. There is NO OS on any of my spare hjdds I am trying to set up. Again and forever a catch 22. There MUST be a simple solution. The two towere are essentialy the same, made from the same pile of spare parts. Why one detects and the other does not is beyond me. Yes I have tried different cables, different jumper settings ect. Nothing works. I am tempted to dispose of them and be done with them.

  • Brian Sullivan
    Brian Sullivan Mar 25, 2011

    http://download.cnet.com/ImgBurn/3000-26...
    totally free
    open up your burning software depending on which it is you can choose either a data cd or dvd or burn an image to disc

  • Brian Sullivan
    Brian Sullivan Mar 25, 2011

    During the boot process you will see on the screen to press a certain key to enter setup
    Press and hold that key during the boot up process to enter BIOS you can load failsafe defaults or load optimized defaults ,press escape then press f10 to save to cmos to restart
    also During the boot process tap the f8 button three times this will boot into safe mode where the only things working will be your mouse and keyboard enabling you to attempt to repair your computer
    hope this helps

  • Brian Sullivan
    Brian Sullivan Mar 25, 2011

    i think that your first idea might fix the problem ((My only solution I think is to try to load the OS using a working tower. Then install the hdd into the spare and see if it works. I do not really want to do this for fear that the existing hdd will no longer work in the tower it came from))
    but restore it optimized defaults

  • Anonymous Mar 25, 2011

    Thanks for trying but the solution is and was a lot simpler than that. As I said #1 detected the hdd, #2 did not. #1 would not allow the cd to load the OS despite the fact that the hdd WAS detected. My solution was to use my back up working 8100 to load the OS onto one of the 6 hdds to keep as spares. Once that was done I installed the now written to hdd into #2 which now allowed me to set it to AUTO. At that point not only did it detect that hhd but all the empty hdds as well. I wrote to a second hdd and installed one into #1 and one into#2. both are now gully functional. I then used my back up to write the rest. I now have 2 new back ups and 4 spare hdds written with the OS. The answer to the original question is still unanswered. Why this worked is still a mystery to me. Only the result counts.

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