fijiblueman Posted August 31, 2010 Report Share Posted August 31, 2010 sooo my mother in law drops off her computer with a new sata drive her son put in (the old one is in there also) the problem she is having is when you turn it on it shows the dell loading screen then the screen goes black and it says "a disk read error occured press ctrl alt delete to restart" any ideas? it is a dell dimension 8300. any help would be greately appreciated. thanks Paul Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ucw458 Posted August 31, 2010 Report Share Posted August 31, 2010 set it on fire??? What is sata? I'm using MFM drives, very reliable. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Komeuppance Posted August 31, 2010 Report Share Posted August 31, 2010 The problem sounds like it's trying to boot from the SATA drive, they default to primary over EIDE drives. Get into the setup, F2 key at startup (press repeatedly in case it POST's fast).Serial ATA will probably say Yes - Press the Space Bar and turn it Off.You should see the Bios request status for two ATA drives. Under your Serial ATA Drive 1 - set it to Auto (Also that it will autodetect on bootup.) -Robert Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
zaza Posted September 1, 2010 Report Share Posted September 1, 2010 What is happening is like what komeuppance said. It is reading as if the sata drive is the master disk. Do just like he said. Make the drive with the OS on it the master and set the sata as secondary until you format the sata drive. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ucw458 Posted September 1, 2010 Report Share Posted September 1, 2010 I feel old now. No one remembers MFM drives. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JustPaus_88TSi Posted September 1, 2010 Report Share Posted September 1, 2010 I feel old now. No one remembers MFM drives. No one "exits to DOS" anymore either. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ucw458 Posted September 1, 2010 Report Share Posted September 1, 2010 No one "exits to DOS" anymore either. I do. I still have an old pc I keep for some of the vintage games that wont run on newer operating systems. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JustPaus_88TSi Posted September 1, 2010 Report Share Posted September 1, 2010 Have you tried "DOS-Box"? I've played the original versions of Rogue with it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
UlrichWolf Posted September 1, 2010 Report Share Posted September 1, 2010 I feel old now. No one remembers MFM drives. Hah....I might have a few RLL's around here, I know I have an ESDI as well. Are you using a ST506, or a ST412? I have a real problem with throwing crap away that still works, even if it is completely obsolete and unusable. I also have a IBM MicroChannel Architecture mainboard and and video card, as well as an old Vesa Local Bus vid card. I should clean my closet. Tim Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ucw458 Posted September 1, 2010 Report Share Posted September 1, 2010 Hah....I might have a few RLL's around here, I know I have an ESDI as well. Are you using a ST506, or a ST412? It's been so long since I worked on that stuff that I have no idea what you are saying. The last MFM drive I had was a monster 80 meg drive. It took up 2 full size bays. It died years ago. But I still have my 386sx lappy and my 300mhz P1 to run the old games. I have a real problem with throwing crap away that still works, even if it is completely obsolete and unusable. I also have a IBM MicroChannel Architecture mainboard and and video card, as well as an old Vesa Local Bus vid card. I should clean my closet. Tim Dude I have some of that stuff too. I have a diamond stealth 64 vesa local bus card, serial port switches, HD/FD cards, vesa local bus soundblaster AWE 32, ect. None of that stuff is useable anymore. I should throw it away too. But sometimes it is usefull. I was trying to link my puter with my TVs years ago and all I could find were cards with S-video outputs. Well I don't own S-video anything so I dug through my stash and found an old 16bit video card with an RCA output. Slapped that in and set it up as my second desktop and wallah, compy output to all my downstairs TVs. (4 total) Now I can use my garage compy to broadcast to the rest of my house. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
vbrad511 Posted September 1, 2010 Report Share Posted September 1, 2010 I've got a Dell 8400. The HD is SATA, the dvd drives are IDE. When I replaced my HD I had to make sure it plugged into port "0" on the board, otherwise it wouldn't boot. I also had to go into the bios and activate port 2 for the old HD (as a backup), or it wouldn't read. So check your bios settings and enable the one that's got the drive plugged to it (not "0"). May also have to enable a combination setting to allow it to run SATA and IDE. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
fijiblueman Posted September 1, 2010 Author Report Share Posted September 1, 2010 thanks for all your help guys i cant even get the bios screen open. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Komeuppance Posted September 1, 2010 Report Share Posted September 1, 2010 Haha... you old school nerds. The other night we were drunk and busted out a PS/2 machine, cracked the case open and were admiring the build quality. Then I said, hey it's got a CD drive... my friends were dumbfounded by my findings... then pretended to stick a CD in the 5 1/4... LOL... anyway... Pretty sure the F2 key is BIOS... -Robert Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
fijiblueman Posted September 2, 2010 Author Report Share Posted September 2, 2010 (edited) thanks robert i think we [you] got it. much appreciated paul Edited September 2, 2010 by fijiblueman Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jszucs Posted September 3, 2010 Report Share Posted September 3, 2010 I do. I still have an old pc I keep for some of the vintage games that wont run on newer operating systems. yeah seriously ditch the old PC run dos box and thank us in the morning. And if you like old games check out abandon ware. will keep you busy for awhile. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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