I have a dell dimension 3000 series desktop and when I turn it on it does not get passed POST and tells me the following: primary drive 0 not found primary drive 1 not found gives me the option of F1 to reboot or F2 for setup when I press F1 it does not reboot

This normally means that the Hard Drive is not recognized, and most likely can be attributed through a crashed hard drive. If it's not POSTing, then I think you need to look for loose cords/cables as well. That can cause the hard drive to not be recognized.

The first message is telling you that for some reason your hard drive isn't being detected. When you press F1, the computer won't reboot because the hard drive still isn't there. You need to figure out what's happened to the drive.

There are a couple of possible causes. One is that the hard drive is fine, but that its power or data cable has come loose. You can check this easily. Unplug the computer power cord and take the side cover off the case (the left side as you look at the computer from the front). This picture shows the hard drive location and connections to it:


Make sure the two cables are firmly seated in their connectors. Also follow the data cable back to the motherboard and make sure it's seated there too. Plug the power cord back in and restart the computer. If the connections were the problem, everything will boot up normally.

If you still get the message that the drive isn't being detected, either the drive has gone bad or there's some problem with the motherboard. The drive is more likely to be the culprit, especially if it's the original drive. If you can borrow a hard drive from someone for testing, connect it in place of your drive (just switch the data and power cables to the test drive). If the motherboard's at fault you'll still get the message about the drive not being detected. With a good hard drive connected, you won't see that message (although the system probably won't boot and you may see other error messages, depending on what's on the test hard drive).

If the motherboard is bad it can be replaced, but you're probably better off getting a new computer. It's less work than trying to locate a replacement motherboard (typically around $100) and installing it if you find one. You can save the hard drive and connect it to a new computer to access data you have stored on it.

If the hard drive is bad, a new drive and fresh installation of Windows will get the computer going again. I'm sorry to say that there's not a lot you can do to recover data from a dead hard drive, so hopefully that won't be the problem.

Good luck, and thanks for using Fixya!