I recently bought a Dell Dimension 4550 motherboard that began by booting to the point where it says Primary Drive 0 not found.

The Primary Drive is recognized in bios, as well as as the cd drives, and it also passes the IDE diagnostic.

The Dell diagnosic lights show three green, and the far right one is yellow. I checked all the cables, which are tight.

I tried resetting the cmos, both by changing the jumper and removing the battery for ten minutes.

The primary hard drive is set to auto, the secondary is set to off in bios.

It is able to use the pci video card, but not the agp.

I started to use the installation disk, but none of the cd drives will open.

After working on it, it now boots to setup, the hard drive chatters, then pings, and it starts all over.

I am using the hard drive right now in a Dell Optiplex 150, so it obviously works

The specs are..

Win XP Home Edition
Intel Pentium 4 2.533-Z/512/533
Intel 845PE chipset
1 stick of 512 DDR SDR Ram
NVIDIA GeForce2 mx/mx 400 64mb memory
Maxtor 5T040H4

I hope this is enough information, no doubt there is something I have overlooked though. I can't help but feel that there is one little setting, some simple thing I haven't tried. lol

Thanks for the help.

Mike




Good evening GreyWeirCat and welcome to CH

OK here are somethings to check as I have one of these PC's that i use just for GHOSTING and data back-ups

#1... In the BIOS (to get the the BIOS press F2) and when you are in there look at the "hard drive 0 & 1" if you have 2 hard drives both should say "hard drive" if you have just one hard drive than the primary drive 0 should say "hard drive" and primary drive 1 should be set to "off" I know you said you did this already.
#2... the same thing for the CD drives as above.
#3... go down to Boot sequence and in there you should see a check mark next to the hard drive and CD drive.
#4... If the PC has the original IDE cables the primary connector is the second from the end. Unlike standard IDE cables where the primary HD is last one the cable.
#5... Make sure the jumpers are set correct.
#6... On the CD drives make sure the drives have both cables. Power and data
#7... You will most likely have to do a fresh install other wise the PC will blue screen

Here is the Dell light diagnostic page. HTTP://support.dell.com/support/edocs/SYSTEMS/dim4550/advanced.htm

Please let us know how you make out, Mike
OK, and will do! Out of curiosity, how will I do a fresh install if the CD tray doesn't come out? I have never done this before, will the bios recognize a formatted hard drive? Sorry if this should be obvious to me. I should have mentioned I checked all the above, and will proceed to number 7.

I like this forum already! Thanks hartbeatmr.

MikeGood evening GreyWeirCat and welcome back

OK the bad news form what you are saying the Cd drive it self is bad / defective so in order to repair or do a fresh install you would have to REPLACE the CD drive. If you look at the front of the cd drive does the light blink / flash or is there no light as if it is dead. If the light does flash you may be able to open it by using a paper clip in the eject hole in the front face like this http://t2.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcTWhU1Yau_d9JlylJs3K3h118gv6ExnYdB rpL6Vb2mWwWLYR6WT

The dell 4550 BIOS does not support booting by external drives, usb flash drives etc. The replacement cd drive must be IDE and not sata.

Hope this helps you, Mike I will try some CD-RW and CD players I have from past PC's.

Thanks for the REPLY! I will post the results, it may take until tomorrow though.

Mike