I need some advice. I've got a PC that has ceased to read the hard drives (has 2). I unhooked the secondary and it fails to read the master. I removed the master and replaced it with the secondary, fails again. I shifted each to the alternate wire harness thinking maybe a wire circuit was the problem. No luck, I need suggestions on the best trouble shooting path forward. I find it hard to believe both the master and the secondary hd's failed at the same time (not saying it couldn't - just suspicious if they did). Now for the most part I'm in the dark when it comes to fixing or working on PC's. I can add Ram and plug and unplug wiring harness's and my skills with a screwdriver are adequate. So please keep instructions simple.
I've already bought another PC for the house and with an international job assignment looming on the horizon I'd like to take the broke one with me (fixed of course) to set up a video and audio connection with my family (wife and kids) while I'm away. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Tig

... as you have a second PC, why not put the HD's in it? Then you would know they're ok.
Then take the HD of the second PC, put it in your first for a try - if it doesn't recognize/detect it then,
you'll at least know where the problem is.

Not sure what could cause this - what happens exactly? Are the HD's detected, and then the PC fails to boot - or are they not detected, and it seems as if there is no HD present?
Do you get some error message at all?

Good luck

Repeated attempts to boot would sometimes get it up to the Windows screen but it always locked up before the desktop page loaded. I believe the error message was something along the lines of "error reading secondary drive". Which is why I switched the drives around (without success).
I'm totally scared to put the old drives in our "shiney new pooter" - if it went down the headlines would read "Wife KIlls Husband over PC".

You have three basic parts that could cause the problem.

First is the harddrive controller. If it failed then both drives would be out of service.
Second is the cable. Probably not the problem unless it had been pulled on the wrong way and the connector going to the mother board has been pulled appart. That would cause both drives to fail as well. But this is less likely unless it has been recently removed and the cable itself was pulled on to remove the connector.
Third are the drives themselves. As you indicated it would be unusuall for two drives to die at the exact same time unless they were hit by lightning. Probably not the case.

One thing you need to check is that the harddrives have some jumpers on them. Usually will see them along the same edge as the connector and power plug. Printed on the drive itself should be the options for the jumpers you can put in. Depending on the age of your computer you may need to tell the drives which is to be the master by setting these jumpers. In newer machines there is a jumper setting for autodetect for this. In that case the master is determined by the postion on the drive cable (should be the end of the cable). So if you swapped the drives around and the orginal secondary drive was not setup to boot the system it would not work either. You might have received some different error messages but it would not work.

Best recommendation since you have a known working machine is to take each drive (remember to configure the jumpers to make them secondary/slave drives) and connect each to the new computer. This will test each disk drive against known good cable and drive controller.

If you find that each drive is ok then swap the drive cable into the known good machine (after carefully inspecting it for damage or seperation at the connectors).

If that works then it is most likely the controller.

If you can afford it you can just pick up a new cable (probably under 10 dollars) to try.

Don't know if they still have any deals but Maxtor was selling 120 GB harddrives for around 120 dollars or a little less. Best Buy had them with a rebate. And you can find much smaller drives for much less than that. So it would be fairly cheap to get a new drive. Not sure what drive controllers go for. The last motherboards I purchased had those built in. Which may be the case on your system.


Hope that helped.

Just read your second message. If you just swapped the drives around without changing those jumpers I mentioned then it probably would not work.

Just remove the second drive, leave the first in its orginal place. You may get it to boot. If so and you need additional space then buy a cheap disk drive and install it.

What Shiv said.

Was about to reply when I realized shiv already pointed out the less than obvious. In IDE/EIDE/ATA configs, you have a master and slave drive and this is often determined by the jumper. If not, it is in BIOS (if HDD controlller is built into the mobo). Controller may also be dying (if you can't read either HDD, this is likely the case).

There are PC fixem up sites all over the web that can give you better advice than we can.

I know your problem.


Your widget valve is sticking so what you have to do is follow these steps.

!. take apart your computer make sure you use a number 10 iron BA(Big Ass) Screw driver.
2. You should see the widget valve on the left side of your computer next to the thingmajig switch.
3.* Warning * never touch the thingmajig switch it may cause your advance waddle relay to go bad.
4, Now you have to get some special widget valve cleaner unfortunately its nto sold anywhere on this planet so go to step 5.
5. Pray to the dark lord with the chant of forever darkeness and widget valve materilization spell.
6. *Warning* Demons may emerge from the Cd-Drive use the sword of safedisk to vanquish them.
&. Sword of Safedisk vanquishes most demons but that of the Billie Gatest Demonicus. You must pull out you federal menopoly dagger. Though it does take severel decades for the cut to vanquish him.
7. Clean Widget Valve
8. Replace case
9. Be kind Rewind

Locutus ,
We Be High Tech Support
420 Mary Jane Lane
Stonesville , In 420420

Locutus=Loco



(*although that WAS some funny stuff*)

I recommend Percussive maintenance on a regular basis to ensure your computer knows who is the boss

Not sure why but the occasional sacrifice of a small furry animal also seems to help. If done as part of your normal preventative maintance routine it may prevent some of these problems.

I had forgotten about the required animal sacrifice. The PIG has been summarily stuck, gutted, skinned, and is currently residing on my "Smoker", which generally produces magnificently tender chunks of meat.
I'll try the suggestions. Thanks to all who helped especially Loco - I had forgot just how bad that Gates Demon was; funny how that demon always shows up just about the time the Gates dude has a shiney new product to sell.

Tig