profundus

I'm working on a Dell Dimension.

Tere's a new HD in it with no OS yet. When I boot the computer, it hangs at the Dell screen for a bit, then goes to a screen and says IDE hard drives not detected, hit F1 to continue or F2 for setup.

When I hit F1, it recognizes the drives and boots off the CD ROM. What's up with that? I'm installing XP now, but not sure what's going to happen after install.

Why won't it recognize the IDE stuff ?


UPDATE:

XP installed on the system, but on boot it still hangs at the opening Dell screen for about 10 seconds, then goes to the screen that says IDE drives are not detected, push F1 to continue, F2 for setup.

If you push F1, Windows boots normally and seems to function okay.

What can I do to get rid of that first hangup and no IDE detection??

Platinum

Well of course nothing is going to load if theres no OS, that's one of the first things that loads when you start a computer. As long as your computer recognizes that there is a HDD installed, you can install WinXP and there shouldnt be a problem. The reason it boots of the CD-ROM is because theres nothing else to boot off of. If you look in your Bios, at the boot configuration youll probably see that it boots the HDD first, followed by the CD-ROM. It follows that sequence, and since there is nothing to boot on the HDD it goes to the next, the CD-ROM. If there's a CD in there it will run the CD.

You said it does...Both your HDD and CD-ROM are IDE drives. So unless you have another drive that it's not recognizing, it's recognizing everything.

Edit: Looks like we both posted at the same time... hmm.... not sure. I'll get back to you on that.

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PohTayToez

I think he wants to get rid of the error, because possibly it's for a client's computer?

Have you tried resetting the CMOS? Possibly going from Master/Slave jumper settings to cable select or vise versa?

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profundus

I'll give that a try and see what happens. Thanks.

profundus

Changed from CS to Master, but the same thing still happens ...