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HELP!! Trying to install two hard drives, and two cd roms in one computer
Hi, I'm new to the forum and I hope I posting to the right message board. I'm trying to install two hard drives that are both windows xp home edition. I am currently able to get one of the hard drivess to boot up but the other cannot even be found. I get messages such as: Primary drive 0 failure, Primary drive 1 not found.
Sometimes I get the message Pxe-e61 media test failure, check cable. ANyone have any suggestions? Thanks :smileyindifferent:
ChrisBrann
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December 10th, 2004 21:00
Sounds like you could have one or two simple issues.
Not knowing how familiar you are with Computers I hope this helps.
THe cables plug into your mother board IDE connectors.
Each cable connected must have one master drive and if a second drive is attached to one or both of the cables, those drives have to be jumpered to operate as slaves. CHeck the back of your hard drive you should see a little two pin plastic connector and some acronyms above or below it like MST SLV CS... You need to jumper the hard drives correctly (one master and second is a slave per cable)
If that is correct, it is probably your BIOS settings. When the comp boots you should be able to enter system setup by pushing a key (F2 or something). Push the key and enter setup. THen you need to adjust the drive configuration to reflect how you have them attached.
Basically, one cable will be the primary and the other will be secondary. Put a master harddrive on the primary and a slave harddrive on the same cable. Put a master CDROM on the second cable and a slave CDROM on this same cable.
THen select the most appropriate primary and secondary master and slave choices. ie primary master = harddrive or auto ...
THen save and exit. Should see them. IF not it's probable still something not quite right with these settings unless the drives are bad or the cable is bad.
Keep in mind that for large drives like >30GB you need to use an 80 connector cable, not the 40 connector.
Good Luck,
CHris