Help with hard drive please

[PC Plus]

A friend gave me their computer to work on because they said it was "slow". When I got it home I opened the case and found dust bunny heaven along with all the components covered in a thin layer of dust. I cleaned it out and then started the computer. The computer is a Dell Demensions XPS D300 with a Pentium II processor at 300Mhz. It also has 160 MB of Ram 8 GB hard drive and was running windows 98. Once I started deleting programs the system resources were up to 96% from 64%, but it had no virus scanner installed on the drive.
I took the hard drive out of that computer and placed it in my computer as a slave drive and was able to scan it this way. When it was done scanning (I am using AVG) it had 95 viruses on it. It was able to heal 17 and the rest went to the virus vault. The viruses are: Win32/EIKern and I-worm/klez.H. These were the only two viruses on the drive, but they were abundant.
Now here is the problem. I put the drive back into the computer it came in and made it the master. Now when it boots it says that no operating system can be found. I tried re-insalling windows and I get the following message: "Setup cannot install windows on your computer. Your computer does not have a hard disk, your hard disk is not functioning correctly, or your hard disk requires a special device driver. Contact our computer vendor for assistance." The Bios are verson A08 and are make by Phoenix Bios 4.0 release 6.0. There is a password set there and I cannot change the boot sequence. The name on the hard drive is IBM, Model DEHA-38451 and is rated as 5v 320mA 12v 260mA. It was manufactured July of 98.
I rechecked the connections and everything is tight. Is the hard drive fried or is there someting else that can be done?

Thank you in advance.

[kilgoretrout]

Did you get the hard drive back in the same place on the ide bus? If so, I'd double check the cabling and hard drive jumpers to make sure they are set right. You said you slaved the drive to your other box; you may have forgot to reset the jumpers on the hard drive to master.
Re your bios problem; that's easy to get around. Take the battery out and disconnect the box from power(pull the plug) and let it sit for an hour. That will reset the bios to the system defaults with no password.

[PC Plus]

I double checked the connections and they are all tight and also checked the jumpers on the hard drive and they are set as a master. I also took the battery out and diconnected the plug from the computer. I came back some 8 hours later and tried to reinstall and I got the following.

At the end of the post screen I got Error 0271, check date and time setting.
From there it showed (Esc) to Resume or (Del) to setup. I tried both options and I got a password screen, which I know, but now it does not work. I try to enter a password three times then I get the screen:

System Disabled [65535]

I cannot access anything. Does anyone have any ideas?

[kilgoretrout]

Check your manual from Dell if you have it or go on line and download it. There are jumper settings on the mb to clear the password described in the manual. However, the password is stored in the bios and the bios can't store anything w/o juice. Try taking out the battery and unplugging for 24 hours. Those capacitors have to discharge sooner or later.

[glc]

Look on the motherboard for a clear password jumper. I've seen Dells with those. The best way to clear CMOS is with a jumper, if equipped, removing the battery doesn't always do it right.

[PC Plus]

glc, thank you for your help. Moving the jumpers on the mb did the trick. Now the computer boots up without a password and says it does not have an operating system. I will try and reinstall it with the system recovery disks.

Thank you all for your help.

[glc]

Before you reinstall Windows, you might want to use Hitachi Drive Fitness Test to check the drive - and zero fill it.

[PC Plus]

I downloaded the Hitachi Drive Fitness Test and it is on a floppy disk. My question is how do you get the program to scan your hard drive? Also, what does zero fill mean?

Thank you for your patience.

[glc]

Download it, and run it - it makes a bootable floppy. Boot with it to test the drive. The "erase disk" option in the utilities is a zero fill. It writes zeros to the whole drive.

[PC Plus]

I booted the hitachi drive fitness test and I got the following results:

It showed the DVD ROM as a secondary master and the CD Writer as the secondary slave. It also mentioned that both of theses devices are not supported by DFT. I tried to install the computer with the system restore disks that came with the computer and that mentioned that it was the incorrect BIOS version. The restore disk is an Aptiva Recovery Version 5.1
Does anyone have any ideas?

[glc]

1. You cannot use an Aptiva recovery disk on a dell.

2. If DFT does not see the hard drive, check your cabling and jumpering and make sure the primary IDE controller is not disabled in the bios - and that the bios sees the hard drive.

http://www.hitachigst.com/tech/techlib.nsf/techdocs/85256AB8006A31E587256A7E0066AAA6/$file/dhea8_ig.PDF

Hmm - this drive is like Western Digitals - jumpering is different for master (single) and master (slave present). Also, I believe that Cable Select works on Dell OEM cables.

[PC Plus]

I looked into the Bios and found the following:

Primary IDE Master [None]
Primary IDE Slave [None]
Secondary IDE Master [Hitachi GD-2000]

Under the submenu of the Primary IDE Master I got this:

Type [Auto]
Multi Sector Transfer [Disabled]
LBA Mode Control [Disabled]
Transfer Mode [Standard}

Should the SEconday IDE Master be in the Primary?

[PC Plus]

Here is an update.

I rechecked the connections and they were good. I also checked the jumpers on the back of the HDD and found that one was loose so I changed it out with a new one and now the BIOs are reading the HDD, and all the other drives. I am scanning the HDD with the Hitachi Fitness Test software and it found nothing wrong with the drive. I am going to do a system restore to the computer and see if it will work. Thank you for all your help.