hard drive not being recognized

[bigal50]

About 2 months ago i installed a 250 gb ide hardrive into my Dell Optiplex 280, P4 2.0 1 gb ram. All was fine until about 5 days ago when i woke up to find this PC at the blue XP screen shutting down( not the blue screen of death blue sreeen). I let the PC shut down completely as it was on overnight. Iwaited for a few minutes and restarted the PC but it would not see the harddrive all I got was a blinking cursor at the upper left hand of the screen. I made several attempts to reboot through out the day but still got the same thing, a blinking cursor. Just for fun I took the hard rive out of that tower put in into another Dell Otiplex and what to my wondering eyes did appear it booted to the hard drive. I took another hard drive an 80 gb,  from yet still another PC and put it into the first Dell Optiplex 280 and it booted right up!!!! So to summerize the Dell Optiplex 280 P4 2.0 will read other hard drives except the 250 gb hd. And the other dell PC will read the 250 gb hd just fine???!!! Why wont the PC Dell see my 250. I can go into the bios and see it recognized but no boot, *censored*??!! Wha happen??!! I was told that maybe the Optiplex 280's bios cant read such a large Hard drive,,,but it had been for a few months now. did it suddenly remember" Hey wait a minute i cant read a 250gd hd...get it out of me" Help me........ 

[Allan]

What is new or different since the last time everything worked properly (ie, new hw, new sw, virus, error, etc)?

[bigal50]

Hmmmmm.......the last thing i did was change my LCD from a 17 in to 22 in screen.........now i do recall that when i was attampting to reboot this PC...I think remember seeing the screen saying " going into sleep mode"
do u think think screen messed everything it up??!!

[Computer_Commando]

Sounds like Power Options are set to Standby or Hibernate.

[patio]

Or if he re-installed XP SP2 is required to read larger HDD's....

More info...

[Computer_Commando]

Or if he re-installed XP SP2 is required to read larger HDD's....More info...

Need more info, but, he said the 250GB booted in another Dell Optiplex & the Optiplex's 80GB booted in the Optiplex 280.

[patio]

Still a lack of info...
We cannot tell what he's done to this point.

[bigal50]

Thanks. appriciatate all the help....but not sure what other info too provide??/ I am using XP Pro SP3 and if my PC is in the hibernate mode ( whatever that is) dont I need to acces the HD to disable these feature and if i cant get to the hard drive to get to the place where  i disable these features how do i disable them???

[bigal50]

Is it possible that I've stumped the computer world as we know it??   Ive noticed that on the one Dell that does read the 250 gb hd there is a bios version of A09.  The bios on the non-reading Dell has a bios version  of A02. Just wondering if that makes a difference?  Maybe the
A02 bios cant read larger hard drives??? but it did for a couple of months.........i am stumped......just call me stumpy........

[patio]

It would not be a BIOS issue if it recognised it at one point and then did not.

[Computer_Commando]

Is it possible that I've stumped the computer world as we know it??   Ive noticed that on the one Dell that does read the 250 gb hd there is a bios version of A09.  The bios on the non-reading Dell has a bios version  of A02. Just wondering if that makes a difference?  Maybe the
A02 bios cant read larger hard drives??? but it did for a couple of months.........i am stumped......just call me stumpy........

Optiplex GX280 is A08, so don't know what you have.  There is no Optiplex 280 listed.  Are both your machines identical?
Go to www.support.dell.com  Enter the Service Tag for each machine.  For each BIOS version, they will list the changes/enhancements & whether the version is optional or critical.

[JJ 3000]

Did you use a different cable when you hooked it up to the other computer?

[bigal50]

oh  sorry my bad guys they are both optiplex " 260's"   but one has bios version A09 and the other has bios version A02 and yes i did use a different cable when i hooked it up to the other computer. i used the existing cable that was in the other computer.

[patio]

Try a new cable...can;t hurt.

[Computer_Commando]

oh  sorry my bad guys they are both optiplex " 260's"   but one has bios version A09 and the other has bios version A02 ...

There's a GX260 & a GX260N.  Your bad again!  Same BIOS for both, A09.  A02 BIOS is not listed, nor is A03 thru A08.  There are no notes for A02 thru A07, but it does say: The following changes have been made to BIOS rev A08 to create A09.  This indicates there was a version A08, but doesn't say what was fixed in A03 thru A08.  If the A02 machine does not recognize the 250GB, I would update it to A09.  If you don't follow Dell's instructions, exactly, you will have a dead computer.