PC not recognizing HDD?

**sovereign6** · July 2nd, 2005, 12:57 PM

I have a old Compaq Deskpro EP Tower 450/100 Mhz pc.

It has worked well for the last 6 years.

Recently upgrded RAM to 384MB . Can't take any more.

I had XP Pro installed on this pc.
Tried to add an aux hard drive, set jumpers and powered off restarted and all I get is error message "Non-Sytem disk or disk error.

No floppy in drive!

Disconnected the aux drive and tried to start with existing HDD and still get same message.

Not recognizing HDD.

Set boot order to read floppy first.

Tried to boot system with ME and win98 Setup disk still same error message

Been into Set up

1. Set Defaults to clear CMOS.

Pleaese help I am now desperate as I need to access my business database.

Thanks

**Jediab** · July 3rd, 2005, 07:03 AM

Have you attempted to reseat the hard drive data and power cables? Also try to reseat the data cable that connects to the hard drive.

Sometimes small particles of dust can get in there and cause the connection to be lost. Reseating the cables usually fixes that.

Also, try to connect the harddrive to your secondary IDE channel. If the CD-ROM is connected there, remove that first and have the hard drive be there on its own. Check in the BIOS (aka setup) after this to see if the HDD is detected.

Hope this helps good luck! Oh and welcome to Windrivers!

**confus-ed** · July 3rd, 2005, 07:55 AM

Originally Posted by Jediab

..Reseating the cables usually fixes that...

On the same subject, I guess its worth saying to try some other cables too, a six year old machine is likely to have very brittle cabling.

& does this machine have a bios that requires you to go detect the disks each time you make any changes ? I think at this age there's a fair chance, so check that whatever drives you have connected are actually what's showing in bios.

**Jediab** · July 3rd, 2005, 05:32 PM

Originally Posted by confus-ed

On the same subject, I guess its worth saying to try some other cables too, a six year old machine is likely to have very brittle cabling.

& does this machine have a bios that requires you to go detect the disks each time you make any changes ? I think at this age there's a fair chance, so check that whatever drives you have connected are actually what's showing in bios.

And try this stuff too.