Primary drive 0 not found. Strike the F1 key to continue, F2 to run the setup utility

[donloper]

I have a Dell Precision 360 desktop. It works just fine in every way, except that at the beginning of the boot process, right after the bios screen, I get a message that says:

"Primary drive 0 not found. Strike the F1 key to continue, F2 to run the setup utility."

If I hit F1 it boots up just fine. Perhaps I should just be happy with that, but it's getting annoying since I always have to hit that key during the boot process.

If I hit F2 it takes me into the setup process. What's interesting here is that if I go to change the Primary Master Drive settings it is set to "auto" but then it says "Unknown Device." However, it recognizes the CD-ROM drive just fine.

I don't believe it is a dead bios battery because the settings are saved. It just appears that my hard drive isn't being recognized as the primary master for some reason and I'm not sure why.

The jumper is set to "master" on the hard drive currently, but I have tried it in other spots to no avail.

[caperjack]

what does the bios show for the secondary ide,have you made any changes inside with the drives ribbon cableperhaps plugging it into the secondary ide plug by mistake .

[crazymanzach]

Do you have more that one hard drive? If so, Then perhaps the one attached to the Drive 0 cable is not the one with the main windows install. F1 may be telling the bios to look on the next drive Drive 1,2,etc.

I once had four hard drives and the main boot was on Drive 3. I swapped the physical drive to the Drive 0 cable and all was good.