I've been swapping components between my computers trying to get two up and running...and I've ran into a problem.

All of a sudden, my 'good' computer (a 1.4Ghz AMD running Win98) decided it doesn't want to recognize my hard drive. I previously had a 30gig and a 4gig Western Digital, with 2 cd-roms. I had the cables (pretty sad, I'm not even sure what they're called, the flat ribbon ones that go to the hard drives and cdroms) running from the motherboard, and y'ing off each to a pair. Now, I've disconnected all but the 30gig and one of the cd-roms, and I can't get the computer to recognize the hard drive no matter what configuration I put the cables in.

When I boot it up, it recognizes the cd-rom, then says

WAIT

Then after about 20secs, says 'Sec Slave HDD Error'. I tried this hard drive in my other computer, and it works fine there. I also have the jumper on the hard drive in the right spot for the primary master.

It says to press 'f1' to resume, and when I do, it starts looking at the cdrom and the floppy for bootup.

Any suggestions? I'm slowly learning about this stuff, but when I hit a hurdle like this I'm lost.

Thanks for any help, I'm dreading taking the trip to the computer service store!

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70 Impala Sport Coupe (350)
67 Chevelle (I wish, still looking and saving)
http://www.geocities.com/ledsled_26m

LedSled.

If you have only one drive in the machine and it is giving you a Seccondary slave error then you have a configuration error somewhere. Do you have the CD-ROM and HDD on the same Ide cable? Does the IDE cable have a red stripe on the side closest to the power connector? (it should!)

Also a secondary slave error indicates it is looking for a drive in the slave position on your second IDE controller.

This would indicate to me that you have a drive configured in CMOS that is no longer in the machine.

Place the 30 gig drive in the master position on the primary controller.
Check your cmos settings and set the HDD type to auto, Jumper the HDD as master and put it on the last connector on the cable.

Put the CD-ROM on the secondary controller by itself.

Tim

Hey Tim, thanks for the quick response.

I got ahold of my user manual for the motherboard and looked up some of the things you mentioned, and changed the CMOS settings, worked like a charm!

Thanks so much.

Whoever says TCers are not helpful and cannot provide priceless advice are IDIOTS!

[This message has been edited by ledsled (edited 10-16-2001).]

No problem. Let me know if you need any more help.

Tim