Problems with the sec master, sec slave

[christian]

Hi Im a 24 years old and Im taking a course in assemble and maitance in pc computers- im really interested in learning as much as i can.. i been studying for about 1 month and 1/2 and i pretty much know all the parts of a computer and their functions-any way im having a problem with my dads pc..the bios will not detect the sec master and the sec slave-I havent learned what that is yet...I think it has something to do with the hard drive?
can anybody please help me accomplish my first task in pcs..thank you

Chris

 

[Daveskater]

check the jumpers on the drives, make sure that one of them is set to master and one to slave

i'm also assuming these are optical drives

 

[christian]

Pri sec-master/slave

I checked both out and their both are set correctly to master and slave- a friend suggest to clean the ram with an eraser and i did- that was a problem that i also had with my laptop as well and it worked.. anyway do you think the hard drive went out, the pc was working fine and one day it just decided not to work-I think its a bios problem- with the configuration? It also says that it doesnt read the cd unit- when i turn my computer on it loads normally(it shows the windows xp logo)than, not long after a blue screen flashes. and it resets?what do you think?
thanks

chris

 

[raybay]

Always look for the little things first. Very often the flat EIDE cable will fail as it ages. The plastic shrinks and hardens. The cables are about $3.95. Borrow or buy one Get the 80 conductor, 40 connector cables so you can use them anywere, then carefully unseat the old ones and replace them.

It can easily be the hard drive, buit check the cables. What you describe is very typical of a failed hard drive, but sometimes just indicates a reformat and reinstall is in order. If your hard drive is a Quantum, Maxtor, or Silver Western Digital instead of the revised black one, you could very easily have a failed drive.... sometimes only the first four boot sectors are damaged, so you can often recover the data as a slave drive.

 

[Tedster]

read the faqs in the storage forum about high capacity drives.

 

[rascard2007]

check the positions of the HDD in the IDE cable, if u r using a 80 wires cable it´s better if U put the master in the end conector of the cable (the one fartest from the motherboard) and the slave in the middle conector.

it could be a hard drive failure but the probability of failing both at the same time without an electricity surge or discharge or a PSU problem is very low. so check ur PSU also.

 

[rascard2007]

check the positions of the HDD in the IDE cable, if u r using a 80 wires cable it´s better if U put the master in the end conector of the cable (the one fartest from the motherboard) and the slave in the middle conector.

it could be a hard drive failure but the probability of failing both at the same time without an electricity surge or discharge or a PSU problem is very low. so check ur PSU also.

BTW: could U tell me what kind of HDD are u using?

 

[christian]

pri sec master/slave- not dected

I talked to my teacher( hes also the familys tech) he said most likely the bios needs to be reconfigurated cause i have a lil bro that doesnt use that pc properly-so I think its happen in the past- my quetion is how do i configure the bios?

 

[christian]

Thanks for da suggestion, i tried the battery thing but it still doesnt detect the pri sec master and slave and more suggestions?
thanks
chris

 

[nickc]

have tried another cable? if not try one, this would be the first thing I would think of since u have 2 devices on the same cable failing.