Pimary (/Secondary) IDE channel no 80 conductor cable installed Floppy disk(s) fail (40)

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This morning, I dug an old PC out from the closet with hopes of spiffing it up for the Learn to Code with Us folks to use at Crashspace. After fixing it up a bit, I turned it on and was greeted with this:

“Pimary IDE channel no 80 conductor cable installed”

“Floppy disk(s) fail (40)”

This is funny, because this computer doesn’t have a floppy drive at all.

tl;dr, the solution was to tell the computer not to check for the thing that isn’t there. Here’s how:

Start up your computer, and when it hangs on the error message, look at the bottom of the screen. There should be instructions on how to enter your Menu/Settings. On my machine, hitting “DEL” takes my to my settings.

On this screen, select “Advanced BIOS Features”:

And then on this screen, ask your computer not to check for your floppy drive by changing “Boot Up Floppy Seek” to “DISABLED”:

Save, exit the menu, and reboot. Your computer should no longer check for your non-existent floppy drive.

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