"Secondary slave hard disk fail." What does it mean?

Question

Everytime I turn my computer on it pauses on the black screen with the message: "Secondary slave hard disk fail." I then have to press F1 for my computer to continue starting up. Once fully turned on, there is an error message stating that "The system has recovered from a serious error" (even though the computer was properly shut down previously) and once I send the error report it comes back as inconclusive, simply telling me that my computer had a problem... which obviously doesn't help me.

Sorry if I am rambling. I have since re-installed Windows hoping this would solve the problem. Our computer is still running slower than it used to and the "secondary slave hard disk" problem persists.

This is a desktop computer with:
Windows XP version 2002
1.83 GHz
512 MB of RAM

Thanks for anyone willing to help.

Answer 1

The secondary slave drive is the second drive on the second IDE chain. Unless your computer has four physical drives in it (not including a floppy drive), you probably need to go into the BIOS and shut off checking for that drive. The BIOS is also called Setup and usually when you first start the PC it will tell you what button to press. Go into the BIOS and see if you can disable checking for that drive.

What is probably happening is the BIOS is set to expect a drive in that position, but if you don't have one the computer sees it as an error. If you need more help you may want to see if someone can have a look at the PC because its hard to tell you exactly what to do without being there.

The IDE chains are setup as Primary Master, Primary Slave, Secondary Master, Secondary Slave, because the Primary Primary, Primary Secondary, Secondary Primary, and Secondary Secondary would be confusing. Not that its not already confusing.

Answer 2

Try to UN plug the slave completely and start computer from the master , see the speed and if there is an error. if every thing works fine remove the Master make the slave as master install it boot up with floppy and format it clean then run chkdsk on it to see if it has bad tracks or not, then make it slave again and install it.

Answer 3

Yes, why not. You will not have to format it to use it (unless you want to erase everything). Just install the HDD as a secondary master/slave and use it.

Answer 4

como estoy apasionada del mundo de los ordenadores me gusta hacer mi propia configuración de ordenador, como todos las otras componentes los he comprado de sitios web y han sido excelentes, el hard disk también lo compre aquí, el hard disk es exactamente como esperaba, muy buena compra.

Answer 5

You have a very racist computer. I recommend your computer use the Virtual Underground Railroad to escape.

Answer 6

It seems you have more than one hard disk, one of which has failed. Please open the cabinet and check if there are two hard drives installed.