[eggFL]

boots up to a blue screen

well it used to, now it just says this:
Primary hard disk drive 0 not found - F1 to retry, F2 for setup utility

I got a Windows 2000 cd and put it in and now it's loading some stuff and I'll see where it goes from there.

I also found this topic:
http://www.hardwareanalysis.com/content/topic/53286/

I'll keep you posted. Oh yea and advice would be appreciated.

[X-5]

my good pc(well it was good when I got it in 2004) broke about a month ago, and it broke RIGHT after I had already been very mad at having an hour of failed runs on green forest. I picked up that son of a bitch and did a little spinning for extra distance and threw it as far as I could. Then I picked it up again and threw it as high as I could up the side of a tree(carefully staying outa the way) which resulted in it slamming hard about 10 feet up and crashed down. I finished it off by standing back about 10 feet and throwing  my cool double-bladed axe (it looks like a standard RPG's battle axe, its cool) right into the middle of it.

my arm hurt for 3 days afterwards :(

I know that doesn't help you.. but maybe it will make you feel better knowing you are not the only one with a stupid pc

[eggFL]

ok the windows 2000 disc doesnt do anything but try to install windows, but it cant since it does not detect a hard drive

the computer has two hard drives and it doesnt seem to detect either

it doesn't detect the third hard drive I put in from another computer

so it's like it is incapable of detecting any hard drive

I was thinking maybe I should replace the CR2032 dime battery in it and that would somehow magically make it work again

other than that I don't know.

oh and paragod - lol. It doesn't make me feel any better. But then I am not really upset... not about the computer itself. Just it is frustrating.

Anyway I could just use the old computer (the one I took the 3rd hard drive from) - I am currently hooking it up and seeing if I can get all my stuff to work on it. But in that case I really look forward to getting a new computer soon.

btw, my computer is from before 2000.

[eggFL]

ok I recognized the jumper switch things on the hard drives. I took them out by using a paperclip in a creative way. After I did that, the original hard drive still doesn't work. However, now the computer detects the 2nd drive when I put it in as the main one. But to install Windows on it, I would have to reformat it. (dunno why that is)

The drive from the other computer (the third drive) also still didn't work for some reason, BUT, Windows 2000 setup detects it during setup. So I thought, what the hey, I might as well reinstall Windows on it. I dont know WHY it would need to and why it didn't work, since it already has Windows on it, but I went ahead and did it.

..and that went surprisingly well other than the fact that now the highest resolution I can choose is 800 x 600, and I am stuck with only 16 colors. I made this post on this machine.

Maybe next I'll put the 2nd drive in in the 2nd slot. If that works and I have all my old data then I would have basically fixed my computer except for the 16 colors problem.

[eggFL]

ok, I have reached a wall

I put in the 2nd drive. The BIOS sees it. Windows device manager sees it. But I can't access it.

Honestly though, I realized that the colors problem is a much, much bigger deal. But I have no idea which video driver will work.

Funny how I put in all this effort but accomplished so deceptively little.

anyone??

[eggFL]

ok that was crazy

long story short I got brilliant colors back. So far it is a pretty good day.

Now about the hard drive....

(p.s. I am not sure if this computer is from 2000... maybe it's 2002. I really don't know anymore)

[eggFL]

ok I asked my dad and he did the last step

I showed him the computer management window where it listed the disks. The disk was there and listed as 'foreign'. So I showed him this, he sat down, right clicked, paused, and clicked "import foreign disc" and voila, problem solved.

That fixes everything. It's OVER. All that's left is to hook back up the speakers, printer, scanner, etcetera...

I'd like to thank TSC for the help. Honestly, it meant a lot.

[GerbilSoft]

ok I asked my dad and he did the last step

I showed him the computer management window where it listed the disks. The disk was there and listed as 'foreign'. So I showed him this, he sat down, right clicked, paused, and clicked "import foreign disc" and voila, problem solved.

That fixes everything. It's OVER. All that's left is to hook back up the speakers, printer, scanner, etcetera...

I'd like to thank TSC for the help. Honestly, it meant a lot.

Why exactly are you using Windows' "Dynamic Disk" functionality? If you aren't using software RAID, it's rather pointless. And even then, Windows' software RAID functionality is quite crappy, since you can't put the system and/or boot partitions on a software RAID partition.

[eggFL]

I might not know the exact reason. It wasn't really my choice to begin with. But formatting the drive took forever. Dynamic disk allowed us to do half now and half later. I think that might have something to do with it. Either that or we did it for no good reason at all other than for the sake of it.