Primary Master Hard disk Fail Problem?

Question

I have an old PC that I want to re-use for simple stuff nowadays. I used to use its hard disk as a flash memory in the past days before flash memories existed. Although, the hard disk is partitioned, I erased the windows 98 version it had manually on another PC.

When I tried to startup my old PC again, I received a message that says "Primary Master Hard disk Fail". I tried several times after switching cables inside the PC but the message always appeared. I even got a CD that would act as a startup disk because I faced problems using the floppy drive, but the CD won't also start automatically. and I received a message that said "DISK BOOT FAILURE, INSERT SYSTEM DISK AND PRESS ENTER".

The specifications of my PC are:

RAM: 64 MB

Hard disk: 8.6 GB Seagate Medalist 8420

Pentium Pro

I really appreciate your time and effort to help me.

Thanks so much.

Answer 1

Try resetting your BIOS by turning off the CPU power supply and switch the BIOS from pins 1-2 to 2-3, leave it on for about a few seconds and switch it back to original position.

Another problem may be the IDE ribbon cable.

Otherwise, the hard disk is probably faulty. See if you could get it to run on your existing newer desktop computer - if your new computer's mainboard has IDE socket that is.

Answer 2

you go to the bios setup(by pressing certain keys during startup). usually it's the "del" key. sometimes other bios manufacturer use F1 or F2 or Ctrl+Esc.

inside the bios setup, you have to modify the startup options (boot sequence or startup sequence or boot order) depending again on the manufacturer. i think it's in the "advanced settings" since it's an old motherboard. select the order: CDROM, Hard disk(or C), Floppy(or A)

you'll have to reinstall an operating system again since you probably have erased the system files... (choose windows 98 since it's a slow computer)