Whine, snivel. Dang thang is broke. :(

[JB]

I don't know how long this has been happening.

PC, XP Home edition. 1 floppy, 1 HDD, 1 DVD. 504Mb RAM (?).

Took it to my nerd last Nov to get the Ram upgraded to 540 (?) and to fix terribly slow performance.

Please don't tell me what I coulda/shoulda done. I hate 'puters and don't like to work on them. I prefer to work on stuff that moves.

I don't remember if I have used the DVD since I got it back, but I haven't been able to boot it without giving it a F1 to get out of this:

SEC Master HDD ERROR
SEC SLAVE DRIVE - ATAPI INCOMPATIBLE

Tried to use my DVD to do some housekeeping on my GPS sat. 'Puter does not recognize the DVD drive.

Went to My Computer. No CD/DVD Drive shown. Shows HDD and floppy only.

Can I fix this from my keyboard? How?

 

[JustJason]

Re: Whine, snivel. Dang thang is broke.

the first thing would be to open it up and make sure all of the cables are in place. Especially if it's an IDE connection. you just may want to unplug it and plug it back in just to make sure its bottomed. same thing with the power connector.

 

[Bob_VT]

Re: Whine, snivel. Dang thang is broke.

Control Panel > SYSTEM > Hardware > Device Manager Now look and if any CD / DVD drives are listed > Are there any yellow question marks showing next to a device??

It sounds as if there are some hardware set up issues. Your drives are not set up properly. I am sure we can install the cd / dvd drive w/o going inside.

 

[amendegw]

Re: Whine, snivel. Dang thang is broke.

Control Panel > SYSTEM > Hardware > Device Manager Now look and if any CD / DVD drives are listed > Are there any yellow question marks showing next to a device??
.

I don't think he's going to be able to do that 'cuz it appears he can't boot. If reseating the IDE cable doesn't help, he might be able to access the BIOS setting for IDE devices and see if the BIOS can find the drives. If that doesn't work, I'm guessing the on-board IDE controller is shot. He could buy a add-on IDE controller board, but (at this point) I'd go of a new computer.

...Jerry

Whoops, my mistake - I re-read the original post. It looks like he can boot (the secondary device(s) are not accessable), but a trip to the BIOS might still be useful.

 

[lowkee]

Re: Whine, snivel. Dang thang is broke.

JB, you likely have both the HDD and the DVD drive set as master on the same cable. I know that doesn't mean much to you, but that is your issue. To fix it, simply pull out your HDD and look at the top of it, it will tell you how to set the jumper on the back to 'master/single'. Do it. Now pull the DVD drive and look on the back, it will show 'master, slave, select'. You want the jumper set to 'slave' (this is normally the center jumper).

Once those are set, you must go into your BIOS (normally F2 or Del upon power-on), select 'Standard settings' (or something with similar wording, normally the default selection), enter that menu, then make sure IDE0 is set to HDD and IDE1 is set to 'auto' or 'cdrom' depending on your PC brand (they call it diffr things) and IDE2 and IDE3 as 'auto' or 'none'. Press ESC to exit that menu, then F10 to save your settings. Choose 'Yes' to save and reboot.

You should now boot without issue. Cheers.

 

[JB]

Re: Whine, snivel. Dang thang is broke.

Control Panel > SYSTEM > Hardware > Device Manager Now look and if any CD / DVD drives are listed > Are there any yellow question marks showing next to a device??

It sounds as if there are some hardware set up issues. Your drives are not set up properly. I am sure we can install the cd / dvd drive w/o going inside.

No CD/CDROM drives listed. Only yellow ? is by scanner, which is working.

Three IDE AT/ATAPI controllers listed. Each claims to be working properly. Boot error claims ATAPI incompatibility of slave (CDROM?) drive. Is that where I need to poke around??

 

[Gary H NC]

Re: Whine, snivel. Dang thang is broke.

Sounds like the boot order in the bios got hosed somehow..
The boot menu will show if the PC sees the dvd or floppy drive ect...It may have somehow been disabled in the menu...

I had a buddy a few weeks ago that brought his machine to me.
Best Buy had sent it off 3 times and could never get it to work after a new mother board.
They said they could fix it but it would run him over 400 bucks!
Took me about 2 hours and no parts to fix the bios and do a fresh install...

You should have no slave drive with the machine only having one hard drive.

Checking that everything is plugged in is the first step..

 

[Bob_VT]

Re: Whine, snivel. Dang thang is broke.

Here is some reading http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc771861.aspx

and

If you are running Win XP with SP3 installed..... there have been problems with the SP3 that prevents the CD/DVD to work.

It's a nightmare at times.

 

[ebry710]

Re: Whine, snivel. Dang thang is broke.

Usually these error come up before XP is actually installed. At the very beginning, when the computer turns on and before it read XP, the computer does a Bios check for hardware. It checks the primary and secondary master/slaver drives. Usually your HDD is hooked to the primary master and you DVD is plugged to the secondary master. In your case the HDD is hooked to the primary master, the DVD is hooked to the secondary slave and the computer thinks there is bad HDD hooked to the secondary master. I would say that there is a detection pin reversed on the DVD (old computer) or at least there is a problem with the DVD. In the old days primary and secondary master/slaver determination was done by the programmer, now a days the modern computer does it automatically.

I am rusty at this, but I'd bring the geek in again and have him look at it.

 

[Tim Frank]

Re: Whine, snivel. Dang thang is broke.

JB, go into the BIOS Setup and check that the Secondary Master is set to CD-Rom.
It sounds as though it expecting a HDD.
I think it's in the "Standard CMOS" section or something like that.

 

[JB]

Re: Whine, snivel. Dang thang is broke.

JB, go into the BIOS Setup and check that the Secondary Master is set to CD-Rom.
It sounds as though it expecting a HDD.
I think it's in the "Standard CMOS" section or something like that.

How does one get into BIOS setup?

I asked for BIOS setup and was told there isn't any such file.

 

[Tim Frank]

Re: Whine, snivel. Dang thang is broke.

I was afraid you'd ask. Believe it or not I just hold down a key while the machine starts up, and it gets there somehow.
Someone can probably give a better instruction.
Most manufacturers have different ways to access it.
Most common is holding down F1 or F2 key while booting up.....

Personally, I just blame all of this stuff on Bill Gates ....

 

[Bob_VT]

Re: Whine, snivel. Dang thang is broke.

Bios entry http://www.cyberwalker.com/article/28

 

[i386]

Re: Whine, snivel. Dang thang is broke.

Almost sounds like your nerd may have been inside doing more than installing ram and got your drive connected wrong or jumpered wrong.

JB, if you don't want to fool with this stuff, you might just give the guy a call and tell him about the error. If he did what I described above it'll hit him when you mention the error.

You're getting the error before the operating systems loads. Therefore there's nothing you can do in the operating system to fix the problem...

 

[JB]

Re: Whine, snivel. Dang thang is broke.

Spoke with Geek this morning. He guided me into the BIOS, where we discovered that the BIOS was set up correctly, just didn't see the CDROM, which must have croaked.

Taking this to the Geek Hospital for upgrade and repair. My guess is a new CDROM drive and go to a gig of RAM.

Will report results.

 

[i386]

Re: Whine, snivel. Dang thang is broke.

Good deal. It's always nice to get a hardware error when you have a hardware problem. Sometimes we're not so lucky.

A gig of ram in a clean system ought to make a significant improvement in performance.

 

[ebry710]

Re: Whine, snivel. Dang thang is broke.

Spoke with Geek this morning. He guided me into the BIOS, where we discovered that the BIOS was set up correctly, just didn't see the CDROM, which must have croaked.

Taking this to the Geek Hospital for upgrade and repair. My guess is a new CDROM drive and go to a gig of RAM.

Will report results.

Oh no, no JB. That geek better fix it.

 

[Tim Frank]

Re: Whine, snivel. Dang thang is broke.

Spoke with Geek this morning. He guided me into the BIOS, where we discovered that the BIOS was set up correctly, just didn't see the CDROM, which must have croaked.

Taking this to the Geek Hospital for upgrade and repair. My guess is a new CDROM drive and go to a gig of RAM.

Will report results.

If you are taking it in anyway, you might consider a DVD-ROM burner.
The extra cost is marginal and the functionality obviously much increased.

 

[JB]

Re: Whine, snivel. Dang thang is broke.

Geek has cast a spell on it and it works again. CDROM was actually okay, aux HDD died and even though blank that prevented seeing CDROM.

 

[i386]

Re: Whine, snivel. Dang thang is broke.

Glad it's going again JB. Looking back over the troubleshooting it's kinda funny...

Some thought it was the OS
Some thought it was the cables
Some thought it was a BIOS problem
I thought the last guy that worked on it had it incorrectly jumped.

Any of those (except the OS) could have caused that error.

Your analysis was correct. The dang thang WAS broke.