Sec Drive Not Detected

onlyoneronaldo

Hi,

When i turned on my laptop this morning i found that it will not load up Windows. It gets to a stage of loading where it says "Sec Drive.....Not Detected", then a load of commands flash up on screen before the screen goes blank. The computer hoewever does not turn off, instead it keeps repeating this. The laptop is an EISystem model and i cannot find anywhere to get customer support. Can anyone tell me how to fix this as i dsperately need access to my laptop today.

Thanks in advance!

Karoma

oO
How many drives are installed?

Check the BIOS settings.. IDE..

onlyoneronaldo

I dunno if this helps but its a EISystem 4411. I havent installed anymore drives. So i'm guessin theres only 1 installed

nobodythere

Do you get to see the windows logo before it says this?

Just so you know, the BIOS is a menu you can get by pressing delete (most likely key) when you start up your computer

onlyoneronaldo

No it shuts off just before it gets to the Windows logo. Wat do i do in the BIOS screen?

Thanks for this help. I really appreciate it

nobodythere

OK this is just a guess but it can't really do any harm.

In the BIOS menu the first option will most likely be something along the lines of "Standard CMOS Setup". Go into this option and you'll see a list of 4 things somewhere along the lines of:

Primary Master
Primary Slave
Secondary Master
Secondary Slave

One of these will probably be your Hard Drive, and another will probably be your CD drive. Go down to each one of them and press enter, hopefully it will auto detect them and pick up which device is which. If pressing enter doesn't do anything on any of them, see if you can change the option to Auto or something.

If this works and it boots up, I would guess that your CD-ROM is unplugged or no longer working.

How old is the laptop?

onlyoneronaldo

grasshopa wrote:

OK this is just a guess but it can't really do any harm.

In the BIOS menu the first option will most likely be something along the lines of "Standard CMOS Setup". Go into this option and you'll see a list of 4 things somewhere along the lines of:

Primary Master
Primary Slave
Secondary Master
Secondary Slave

One of these will probably be your Hard Drive, and another will probably be your CD drive. Go down to each one of them and press enter, hopefully it will auto detect them and pick up which device is which. If pressing enter doesn't do anything on any of them, see if you can change the option to Auto or something.

If this works and it boots up, I would guess that your CD-ROM is unplugged or no longer working.

How old is the laptop?

Can you look at this BIOS screen and tell me wat to do please?

http://www.pcservicecall.co.uk:80/layout.aspx?ID={e1f1ab25-65fe-4180-b017-957f96ecc217}&CatID={6cb5dce1-4525-44d2-b84a-e55cb731e566}

thats the screen i see



the laptop is 3 years old by the way

nobodythere

I'll explain some things first in simple terms:

There are two ports in your laptop for connecting drives (called the Primary and Secondary IDE ports). Out of each port comes a cable which can hold up to two drives. One drive has to be set to 'master' (the primary drive) and the other has to be set to 'slave'.

Sometimes in the BIOS menu it can be set up to detect certain devices, so if one of these gets unplugged (Hard drive or CD drive) it will report an error while booting up. What you have to do if there's an option in the BIOS is to set it to auto-detect devices.

Go to Advanced -> IDE configuration. Press enter on each of the options there (except "Hard Disk Write Protect") and check that everything that can be set to Auto is set to auto. Then hit F10 to save and exit.

onlyoneronaldo

I have tried that but it hasnt done anything. I still think it has sumthin to do with the CDRom though cos its been makin really strange noise of late. Is there anyway of just disabling the Sec Drive so it doesnt look for it? I dont mind if i dont have the use of my CDRom for a while, i just need to get into Windows.


Thanks for the help. Really appreciate it!

nobodythere

Well you could just open it up and plug it out. It's not difficult except for the fact that laptops are usually a bit cramped for space.

There SHOULD be an option (on any feckin decent bios anyway) to set the secondary drive to None. When you scroll through the options in Secondary Master is there an option for None?

onlyoneronaldo

Theres an option for NOT INSTALLED. But when i try to start it up it gets as far as finding the Primary Drive then nothin more happens

Standard Toaster

Sounds like you gotta disconnect it mate. The cdrom drive is still interfering with boot even though it's disabled. (Not uncommon)

nobodythere

Actually yeah I've seen that before, CD rom still ****ing up the boot up. Even when the IDE cable was disconnected it still crashed a lot, must have been eating power because of some malfunction I guess.

Yeah might as well give it a go shur. There are two cables, one is the power cable (4 wires, small), and the other is the IDE cable (stripy thing).. Disconnecting the power will do on its own.

onlyoneronaldo

Ok guys. Will give it a go and i'll tell you all how it goes

onlyoneronaldo

OK i've taken the above advice but it just gets as far as detecting the Primary Drive then starts goin in circles. I really havent a clue wat is wrong. I put the laptop back together and the Sec Drive is still not detected.

nobodythere

When you go to Advanced-> IDE config in the BIOS, what does it say beside primary and secondary?