Hello all;
I often build custom systems, however someone in the family recently asked me to install Windows 7. I never like working on any retail systems, always run into problems. Their computer is a Dell Dimension 1100 that was running Windows XP.
Here's the problem. On the Dell, I set the bios to boot from the DVD drive so it would run the Win7 installer. When booting it does boot from the disk, and goes through the Windows installer loading screen. However after that point, it errors out. I even tried hooking up an external DVD drive to run the disk from, however it never recognizes the USB DVD drive. So the next step I took, is pulling the drive out and attaching it to my own system. From there, I wiped the partitions and installed a fresh copy of Win7 64bit onto the drive. This worked flawlessly, and I then reattached it back into the Dell. However now when I boot up the Dell, it goes through the initial bios loading screen, and then errors. The exact error it shows is ' Primary drive 1 not found, Secondary drive 1 not found. ' It appears that it is no longer detecting the hard drive. In bios, going to Drive Configuration and choosing Primary Drive, it does show the Seagate drive.
I'm not exactly sure why it's no longer detecting the drive. I've ensured it's hooked up and attached fine 3 times now. I had only detached the power and IDE cable. I have attached screenshots below of the boot screen, errors, and bios and settings.
If anyone might know what has happened, or why the Dell is not detecting the drive it would be most help and with a solution if possible. I put the drive in my system, and it detected just fine and booted into Windows. So it appears the Dell system refuses to boot from the drive, and appears not to detect it, even though in Bios it shows up.
Dell Boot Screen - http://pkhq.net/images/dellbootscreen.jpg
Primary / Secondary Drive Errors - http://pkhq.net/images/delldriverror.jpg
Bios Main Screen - http://pkhq.net/images/dellbios.jpg
Bios : Drive Configuration : Primary Master - http://pkhq.net/images/delldriveconfig_primarymaster.jpg
Bios : Boot Sequence : http://pkhq.net/images/dellbootseq.jpg
All help is appreciated. Thank you.