So I went to turn on my computer the other day, when my screen went black and the following showed up:

Detecting Master Slave: None
Detecting Secondary Slave: None

According to some techies, this means I have a hard-drive problem; to a non-technophile such as myself, this means next-to-nothing, but is some sort of serious problem. Should I just take my computer to some technician and hope for the best, or should I simply assume that all of my files have been lost?

[Please don't tell me I have lost my archive of Joan Rivers photos. ]

Maybe your hard drive's connector thing got loose.

open it up, check jumpers from hard drive to motherboard

It sounds more like a connection problem than a software/crash problem.

It sounds like you have a master/slave problem.



I'd try S&M 101.

I think the archive of Joan Rivers photos is the problem.

Not to add another problem to the list, but I think you've probably got a motherboard problem. If it was the hard drive, it seems doubtful that it just wouldn't detect anything at all. Like wilked, I would check the physical connection b/w the motherboard and hd and b/w the hd and power supply, but I doubt that's the issue. Assuming whatever caused the short in the mobo didn't hit anything else, it should be about a $100 fix (not including labor).