[megajohnd17]

I have a Dell Dimension 8250. I reformatted my hard drive due to slow running and poor performance. The dvd drive had been coming up with the message "please insert disc into drive d". After the reformatting, everything was faster but the problem with the dvd drive problem persisted. While installing all my software, the cd burning drive (E stopped reading discs. It would show a disc type but said 0 bytes and 0 free space. I purchased a new cd/dvd burning drive, installed it in the D: drive, and same thing as before, "please insert disc into drive d". Moved it to the E: slot and same there too. No read. I managed to get it to read and burn, but only after a restart. Try to change disc, 2nd one doesn't read. I have tried a bunch of things but no luck. It's been several weeks, and I was at least able to do that. This weekend, I moved my computer, nothing was dropped, hooked everything back up, and it comes up a black screen and white letters saying
"Primary hard disk drive 1 not found
Secondary hard disk drive 0 not found
Secondary hard disk drive 1 not found
Strike the F1 key to continue, F2 to run the set up utility"
If I hit F1, the computer starts up, everything seems great but the drives do not show up anywhere. They do have power, I can insert a disc. What could I do to solve this? I tried changing the registry from a thread here. Nothing. Please help, I'm at my cracking point. Thanks!

[Tagware]

How old is the Dell? As the Black and White screen can indicate that the back battery for the CMOS (where the computer stores configuration info) has had it's day. ie. Battery needs to be renewed.

http://support.dell.com/support/edocs/systems/dim8250/techov.htm#1105443

[megajohnd17]

Thanks. I'll give that a try.

[megajohnd17]

Thanks. I replaced the battery and all is well with booting up.

[Tagware]

That great to here.

[Tagware]

opps 'hear'