My cousin asked me to look at his 4 year old Dell Inspiron 1100 notebook, because he was frequently receiving the blue screen of death. After finally getting it to boot up in safe mode and getting his files off-loaded to my primary desktop, I decided to reformat and reinstall XP. All was going well until about half way through the installation and then I got the dreaded message:

"Primary Hard Disk Drive 0 Not Found. No Bootable Devices -- strike F1 to Retry Boot or F2 for Setup Utility". At this point, the hard drive also started making a terrible clicking noise. Since I had his files saved off, I decided to get a new hard drive for it, so went out and got a new 60 gig drive. Put it in and got the same message! So I thought maybe I needed to flash the BIOS, which I did, but afterwards, same message. It won't let me load XP because it still doesn't think there's a hard drive present. Obviously, I think there's more to this than a bad hard drive, since the old drive and a brand new drive are returning the same message. Could it be something with the controller/mobo? Could it be something with the caddy?

I can't even run WD's diagnostic's or lifeguard utility on it because it doesn't even recognize the HD.

Frustrated in PA. Help?

Thanks, Dave

Hard drive is shot. Get a refurb on www.tigerdirect.com or a new one at www.zipzoomfly.com.
If you have the Dell recovery disc set it is easy. Otherwise, you will have to buy the recovery set from Dell for about $40

I was a Dell L2 tech for over two years. I believe that the ide channel on the mobo is bad. This can destroy a good hdd as well. If the notebook were in warranty the next step after replacing the hdd would be to replace the mobo.
I am currently working on a client's inspiron 1100 now with the same problem. I just installed a new 40gb hdd and received this message during the installation. I pulled the cru's -modem, mini-pci card and still get the error; the bios is current - definitely the mobo.

believe that the ide channel on the mobo is bad

What is the IDE channel on the mobo? I bought a new HD for my 1100 and was hoping to install it myself.