"Helene" wrote in message ...
A friend of mine is getting the message "Primary slave not detected" when
she starts her computer. What would cause that message and what is the
primary slave? What needs to be done to fix the problem? Thanks for any help
you can give us.

PC computers have two parallel IDE channels for connecting hard drives
and optical drives (CD drive and DVD drive), designated the primary
and the secondary channels. Each channel allows for a "Master" and a
"Slave," thus allowing up to four IDE devices in a typical PC
computer. Any IDE drive can be set as either Master or Slave or as the
only device on the channel (or as cable select, but there is no need
to worry about that setting).

The Master/Slave/Lone Device setting is selected by the use of little
plastic-coated connectors that are on pins on the back of the drive.
These connectors are called, "jumpers." Different manufacturers have
different jumper configurations for setting the Master/Slave/Lone
Device setting. Usually, the necessary jumper pattern is printed on
the drive somewhere, or embossed on the metal of the drive, near the
jumper pins on the back of the drive.

The usual boot drive is set to be the Primary Master drive. If there
is another drive on the primary channel, it should be set to be the
primary slave. There does not have to be a secondary master drive,
even if there is a secondary slave drive.

The most common cause of the problem you described is that two devices
have the same setting, for example, you may have two slave drives on
your Primary channel.

It would be best to check the settings of all your IDE drives. Note
that hard drives usually are set to a default of Master, and optical
drives usually are set to a default of Slave.