Bios not recognizing hdd or cdrw.

[hu_nr]

Hello,

Need some help. Was given my mothers old pc. I am familiar with some hardware issues, but this one has me stumped. The bios won't recognize the hard drive or cdrw. I have swapped out old ide cables with new ones and did get it to recognize the hard drive, so then did the same with the cdrw. Worked for a little while. Rebooted and again in bios setup does not recognize either. It's a Dell Dimension 4300, don't know the motherboard specs. Need to research that yet. This pc has not been over used. I have been to the Dell support sight and found download to flash the bios and upgrade it from A02 to A06. Won't be doing that till this weekend. Just want to know if that will help or could it be something else. Also, when it did recognize the hard drive it booted to XP and no problems. It seems after I connected the cdrw and rebooted after bios recognized both drives I received unknown device for my primary 0 and secondary 0. Any help on this issue would be great.

Thank you hu_nr

 

[ddeder]

Same problem

I'm having the exact same problem with my Dimension 4300. I updated the BIOS to the A06 version and that did not help. Did you happen to solve the problem? If so, could you please e-mail the solution to me at ddeder@yahoo.com? Thank you.

 

[hu_nr]

Found the problem.

I discovered the problem with my dimension 4300. I flashed the Bios to A06. Recognized the cdrw, but not the hdd. Decided to do a test. I had a 10gb hdd lying around and installed it. Bios recognized the hdd even after a handful of reboots. I was able to install Windows XP and even with periods of non-use it is working. Hope this helps.

 

[ddeder]

My solution

Thanks for the reply. Actually, I found that the secondary drives were set to auto in the bios. When I changed this setting to OFF, it solved the problem.