Secondary Drive 1 Not Found

Name: Eric

Hi Guys,

When I boot up my computer, which has been going slower and slower, I get this error message “Secondary drive 1 not found. Strike the F1 ket to continue, F2 to run the setup utility. What do I need to do to fix that? Then there is the problem that it takes too much time to continue to boot up and I do believe it is either a virus or spyware.

As for the “Secondary drive 1 not found” error, have you always been getting this? If so, then it’s not a big deal. A lot of BIOSes, if set to auto, will spit out annoying little announcements on bootup about different crap not being connected. Now, if it’s a new error then you probably just have a loose connection. I can’t count how many times I’ve gone to install something in a computer and managed to bump an IDE cable out just enough that the drive isn’t read anymore. Make sure everything has solid connections.

Also, if you did install a new drive, make sure that the jumpers don’t conflict with one another. If two drives are on the same IDE channel (use the same cable) then one must be set to master, and the other to slave.

As for your possible spyware/virus issue, then just update any virus and spyware scanner that you’ve got and see what it finds. Make sure to update though, an outdates definition file is pretty much useless with how fast that garbage gets published nowadays.

Also, you can check what’s loading on startup with HijackThis (very robust) or MSConfig (not as functional, but very easy)