[Waterman2k]

I shut down and restarted my Dell GX240. on reboot i got a message citing a Keyboard error and telling me to press F1 to retry of F2 to enter setup F1 did no good. F2 took me to the setup screen where it showed Both primary drives and both secondary drives were unknown. the system will not recognize any of these devices. For each drive it says Unknown Device. when you select detect it returns to unknown device.
It was suggested that i install a new battery, which I did. Now when i try to reboot It provides basic system information, states that it is performing automatic IDE configuration, and then brings up the same message as before: Strike F! to retry boot, F2 for setup utility.
Any thoughts on this will be much appreciated.

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Assuming nobody's been inside the case and changed the jumper settings on the drive, this can be caused by a faulty IDE/Ribbon cable. Swap it for the one that the hard drive is connected to. If the system now finds the CD units but not the hard drive, replace the cable.

[Neil Jones]

Assuming nobody's been inside the case and changed the jumper settings on the drive, this can be caused by a faulty IDE/Ribbon cable. Swap it for the one that the hard drive is connected to. If the system now finds the CD units but not the hard drive, replace the cable.

[shard92]

sometimes after replacing the battery you also need to go into setup and tell it to save settings before it will keep everything.... So if you havent' yet go to setup ( f2) and be sure to save before or as you exit....

Also if a drive has gone bad ( either cd or hd ) it can cause the other drives to not be detected correctly....