HDD error at startup

[rymort]

Hi, Im having a problem when my computer first boots up. It does the memory check then looks for IDE drives and finds both my cd-rom and cd-rw. But then it sits there for 30 seconds and an error pops up saying Hard drive diagnostics failure. then i press f1 to continue and it says BOOT DISK ERROR or something along that line. It was working a few days ago perfectly. I opened the computer to check for loose cables and sure enough the IDE cable was loose. I pluged it in and still does the same error.

Any help would be appriciated.

Thanks.

 

[DarkBlade1]

Take out your system battery when the PC is unplugged. Hold down the power button for 30 seconds. Then but back in your battery. Then start it up. Enter your BIOS, and reconfigure it again, it should reset it and fix problems you are having. GL!!

 

[rymort]

what is my system battery?? is that the motherboard battery that looks like a little round silver coin?

Also i tried putting in a different hard drive and it says primary slave error or somthing

i tried changing the jumpers to cable select, didnt work so i put it back to master

 

[DarkBlade1]

Yep, that is the system battery!! Take it out and follow directions above, that should fix it.

BTW, make sure your drives are configured correctly. You should only have one (1) Master Drive and the rest as slaves...

 

[rymort]

ok how do i remove the battery?? just pop it out? and secondly, what does holding down the power button for 30 seconds do? is it safe to boot up your computer without the battery in there?

 

[DarkBlade1]

Yep, just pop it right out. Holding down the power button while the PC is UNPLUGGED drains the power out of the MOBO, effectively clearing the CMOS settings for you. No, it wont hurt if the battery is removed during startup, but since that clears startup procedures each time, and resets the BIOS settings, it isnt a good idea to do. Do it only when you have boot problems. GL!

 

[rymort]

ok one last question, i dont work the the bios very much, only thing i know how to do is to change the boot order.

now when i do this method? i have to reprogram the whole bios or is it going to be the same as before?

 

[DarkBlade1]

If you have never messed with it much, don't worry about it. Just make your boot order correct, and it will be fine. The defaults are perfectly ok for you. Just do EXACTLY as I said, and you will be fine. I hope it fixes the problem though, it should....

 

[rymort]

ok i did everything u said, and still the same error, i change the hard drive and it seems to be fine. so is the hard drive fucked?

also now the memory check at the start seems to be doing a continuos check, it doesnt stop until i hit skip memory check, how do i fix this?

 

[rymort]

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