ok, here is the problem.

A few days ago I went to restart my computer and it would turn off so I forced it to shut off by unplugging it. Then it wouldn't start up, so I thought great another dead hardrive. So I bought a new harddrive, Installed Windows XP and everything went smooth with that but now the problem. When ever I try to turn the computer off the windows screen that says somthing like "saving your setting" or windows is shutting down (not sure what it says but you that last screen) it just freezes in the screen position. So I force it to shut down. Then when I turn the computer on the Dell screen appears with the little White slidey bar at bottom to display its progress goes way slower then normal and after thinking for awhile it goes to a screen saying no primary harddrive found, press f1 to countinue or f2 to enter the bios. This happens everytime. When I hit f1 windows xp will start just fine. What gives?

computer info
Dell precision 530 mt
bios update A11

I currently have one harddrive in

Oh, one last thing, when I do enter the bios it does appear that the harddrive is found.

any thoughts would be great.
thanks
Nic

OK, so I got the the problem solved with the start up. My bios where set to auto detect primary 1 and secondary 1, which I currently am not using so the only problem now is the shut down of the computer. It gets frozen at the "windows is shutting down" screen.

Nic

Hi nic and welcome to PCHF!

Common causes:
1. Roxio
2. Nvidia Driver Helper service
3. unlicensed copy of XP having WGA problems
4. Unsigned hardware drivers

I have not had any problems for about a year and now my graphics card help service is giving me these problems. My copy of windows is good! What type of hardware could be giving me these problems? I have a Sprint usb wireless internet thing (U720). The software for this thing loves to crash. If I remember correctly just before my other hardrive failed I had a message from my anti virus saying hardware changes have been made. I cant recall ever making any changes. Anyway, is there anything you can think of now?

nic

PS thanks for the quick reply

I think you might just have the jumper on the hard drive in the wrong slot. That should be easy to fix. Open up your computer case and take out the hard drive. There is a little pin like thing called a jumper that you can move in the little area. Change the jumper so it is on Master. There should be a legend on the harddrive as to where Master is on yours. The picture might not be in the master position.

Your NOT using Primary Master as the first boot hdd?
Have you got a sata drive in this pc?