Computer boots weird

Computer Hardware
#1

I decided to add ultra ata/133 PCI adapter card and 2 - 140 GB maxtor harddrives to my Dell 8100. All I did was add the card and hard drive’s. I didnt mess with Bios settings are change position of primary hard drive. I left the 60 GB maxtor as the primary harddrive. Now when comp. starts up it hangs on the xww.dell screen and instead of loading windows it goes to a different screen that gives bios version and gives message:
Primary hard disk not found
Strike F1 to continue, F2 to run setup utility
When I Strike F1 and windows loads.

I removed the adapter card and it still does same.
The only other thing is that I used Ontrack’s disk manager to format the 2 new hard drives. I am thinking that Disk Manager has messed something (bios?) up. And that it should be uninstalled? If you have an idea about what could be the problem Please tell me.

#2

Hmm allright…

It could be, that the BIOS detected the ATA card and set the primary boot device to that card. Can you perhaps check your BIOS if it’s set to boot to anything other than primary harddisk (or IDE0 or onboard IDE or whatsoever)?

Often, these cards are detected as SCSI cards btw (if your BIOS is set to SCSI boot, you know what’s wrong :))…

#3

No, the boot sequence is same. diskette, hard drive, CD

#4

Originally posted by nukeemall
No, the boot sequence is same. diskette, hard drive, CD

Is that exactly what it says in the BIOS?? diskette, hard drive, cd??

Alot of times it will have IDE0, IDE1, and so on. Make sure that there is no option for “boot other device” or something along those lines. If there is, disable it.

On the note of the format issue…I personally dont use anything but Windows to do the formatting of my drive. What windows are you running?

#5

I am running xp pro.
Exactly what it says in the BIOS:
Boot Sequence
Diskette
Hard Disk C (this is my primary hard drive)
IDE CD-Rom Device
Also in the bios it sees the:
Primary hard drive 0
Hard Drive
Maxtor 5T060xx
Drive Type Auto

IDE Drive interface Auto

Fast Boot off

There is another bios setting that gives options on what boots - sorry I didnt write it down.
But it says primary hard drive cant be found. And I think the other option is the controler card and somethind else.

I did not format my primary hard drive with disk manager and had never used anything but windows before. I uninstalled Disk manager but it didnt help. I have a hard drive in a different computer and I guess I will see if the bios can see it. If that dosent work I dont know guess the bios is messed up and would have to flash it some how, only problem is that I cant get it to boot from diskette.

#6

What motherboard are you using??

What BIOS revision??

#7

Okay I looked at system information

BIOS Version/Date Dell Computer Corporation A06, 4/20/2001
SMBIOS Version 2.3
Boot Device \Device\HarddiskVolume3
Shouldnt it show that the boot device is Volume 1 ?