Hello when ever i star up my dimension 3000 it reads (primary drive 1 not found secondary drive 0 not found secondary drive 1 not found)

it sounds that you have problem in the mother board, you can hooked up your drive to other pc as slave just to ensure if it will read. if ok, then their is no problem in your hard drive also with other drive.

test for secure dust free connections or replace the 40 pin ide lead from mother board to hard drive
include electrical extensions
operating system cant find ide hard drive
hope it helps

If you have a spare working hard drive to test in this computer, swap it out with the existing one. All you have to do is verify that a drive is found during the post. If you get the same message, I would suspect the IDE controller on the motherboard has failed. With the age of the computer (5 years), I would suggest getting a new or used computer to replace it. You may be able to find a replacement motherboard for it, but then to keep it legal with a Windows operating system, you have to locate a motherboard of the same make/model.

Most likely scenario is the drive is dead, but also the BIOS on your computer is old itself, I believe there are a few BIOS upgrades available for that model, might want to check with Dell support site. If you have access to another computer, there is a way to check your drive. Go to a computer retail store or on Ebay, but a EIDE/SATA to USB adapter. This will allow you to take a hard drive out of the case and attach this adpter to it and plug the usb side into another computer, laptop, doesn't matter...that computer will read the drive as an external hard drive....if the drive is indeed still viable. If it is, this would be a good time to save your files to the other computer for safe keeping until you can get your other system back on its feet.

there are few thing you ahve to keep in mind

there are two type of hard disk
1. IDE
2. SATA

As per your hdd capacity it should of IDE type.

Now there are two IDE slots on motherboard. One is Primary and other is Secondary

You can fix two hdd with one IDE Slot that mean you can fix up upto faour IDE hdd at a time

Now again there are Primary master and Primary Slave

and

Secondary Master and Secondary Slave

Now You have to examine what was the location of previous hdd
1 Primary Master
2 Primary Slave
3 Secondary Master
4 Secondary Slave.

Now you have to make a HDD master or Slave.

just in between data cable connector and power cable connector there is a jumper. that specify the master or slave. do reply me if it works well thanks

For this problem it only means that the Hard Disk of the computer is not being detected

Try doing the ff:

• reseat the IDE or SATA cable of the Hard Disk
  
• Clean the port where the cable is connected (make sure that the computer is unplug)
• reboot the computer
• if problem persist contact computer manufacturer

Hope this will help
Thanks
BYron

It sounds like you may have the IDE cables hooked up backwards on your motherboard.. The IDE cable slot on the motherboard labled IDE1 should be where your Hard drives are if you want them to read as primary. The Optical drives are usually on IDE2, designating them as secondary.
Let me know if you need more help.

Either the BIOS is not configured to sense the connector where your hard drive is attached or the drive is dead and unreadable.

Start the machine and press F2 when you see the Dell logo. This should get you into the BIOS setup. Come down to Drive Information and see if your HDD is listed under IDE1 (or Primary Master). The BIOS should list the model number and capacity. If IDE1 is off or disabled, change the setting, reboot and go back into BIOS. If you still can not see the HDD in BIOS, remove it and put it as a secondary drive in a different machine to see if it comes up. If not, you have a dead drive.

yeah go for it, restore the factory setting,

Did you check inside and see if all the cables are attached?
Is the hard drive spinning, it may be bad.
Did this just happen?