Question

Secondary drive 0 not found

Asked by: NCGPIICT

Dell Optiplex GX270, win XP OS. When a user logs into PC they receive the folloiwng message
secondary drive 0 not found
strike F1 key to continue, F2 to run setup utility

Press F2 to run setup utility. Drive config says the following:
SATA Primary Drive - OFF
SATA Secondary drive - OFF
Primary Master drive  - Hardrive
Primary Slave drive - OFF
Secondary Master drive - Unkonwn device
Secondary Slave drive - OFF
IDE Drive UDMA - ON

Boot sequence is:
1. Disk drive
2. Hardisk drive C:
3. CD-ROM device (not installed)

When you strike F1 it then goes to the normal log on screen. However it will not run any CD's. I have checked device manager and DVD/CDrom drives are not showing. I have checked and reseated the IDE cable onto the motherboard but it still does not appear.

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Asked On
2008-10-31 at 05:05:11ID23864796
Tags

Dell

,

Optiplex GX270

Topic

General Computer Systems

Participating Experts
3
Points
250
Comments
4

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Answers

 

by: subliferPosted on 2008-10-31 at 07:16:46ID: 22850257

The Unknown device in your BIOS is your optical drive.  Its fairly rare to happen but your drive has apparently corrupted its firmware or is otherwise not communicating with the bios.  

Your best next step is to find a known good IDE cable, maybe the one from your harddrive, replace the one on your optical with the known good cable, power on and go to the bios to see if it is properly detected.  If so then your cable is bad (yes it can happen on PCs that haven't been moved and worked fine) if it still shows unknown then the firmware or the controller (on the drive) is toast and you need a new drive.

I hope its just the cable since that is the easiest to resolve.

 

by: ridPosted on 2008-10-31 at 14:33:40ID: 22854277

Perhaps forcing the BIOS to run autodetect on the IDE channels will help, or a CMOS reset, if the cable swap isn't successful.

Also make sure the optical unit and the HD are jumpered consistently; that is, master for both as they're on different channels. Or, if you use Cable Select, make sure they are jumpered CS and are both on the end connector of their cables.
/RID

 

by: nobusPosted on 2008-11-01 at 05:52:23ID: 22856603

>>  Dell Optiplex GX270   <<  have a record for bad capacitors -  check your mobo
i had 2 of them as shown :

 

by: NCGPIICTPosted on 2008-11-04 at 04:55:21ID: 31512008

thank you. i ended up replacing the cd rom drive not the IDE cable but led me in the right direction

20120131-EE-VQP-002

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