new hard drive help (Merged threads)

[blazedhacker]

ok guys i've been working on a hard drive for about a week now and i need help in trying to install windows xp on it...its a 250 gig maxtor hard drive and a celeron compaq desighned for windows xp....me and my friend have tryed everything in order to install windows and when we get to the part in the setup where we have to chose the partition we can't choose **** and then we press enter it goes to a stop error message so at this point any and all help will me much apreciated. ty

[blazedhacker]

srry for the curse iam really mad i can't figure this out

[blazedhacker]

i need help with installing/formating a 250 gig HD...the HD is brand new...i put in the windows cd and it gets to the partition part of the setup and it doesn't reconize the HD at all plz help...i put the HD as both slave and master i think and i have the BIOS set to run off cd first.

[David Byrnes]

Is this the only hard drive in the computer, or is there another? Does the drive have a jumper setting labeled autoselect, and if so, have you tried with it? Which connector on the ribbon cable are you connecting to? Have you tried with a different connector and also with a different plug from the power supply?

[blazedhacker]

there was another HD in the computer but thats a 40gb and we want to install this new HD...i have tried 2 different connectors as many different ways i could think of...when i took out the old HD i put the connectors in both plugs on the mobo...and the new HD runs and it gets hot and spins but the computer doesn't reconize the HD as being there

[Jade Dragon]

If the motherboard itself does not support the larger harddrive... then that would be the problem.

There are some pcs which "cap" the upgrades...

Sometimes you can go to your pcs website and get a bios upgrade to allow this. however use with caution if a bios update goes bad.. weeeeelllll.... it may lose your bootup.

good luck.

[David Byrnes]

If the motherboard itself does not support the larger harddrive... then that would be the problem.

There are some pcs which "cap" the upgrades...

Sometimes you can go to your pcs website and get a bios upgrade to allow this. however use with caution if a bios update goes bad.. weeeeelllll.... it may lose your bootup.

good luck.

Also, some motherboard and PC makers have the flash bios upgrades on their web sites. When I worked at Dell, I'd have customers download their current bios version, as well as the new version. If the new bios flaked out, they could revert to the old version.

[YvetteKuhns]

I personally had to flash the BIOS on a motherboard to accept different hard drives. I also watch to see if the jumpers are set for master or slave since some slaves were reformatted to be tested as masters in other towers.

Do not be afraid to flash the BIOS, but do try to make a copy of the current one before you do it just in case.


i put in the windows cd and it gets to the partition part of the setup and it doesn't reconize the HD at all

Did you get Windows installed? If so, which version? Are using FAT32 or NTFS?

i need help with installing/formating a 250 gig HD...the HD is brand new

I installed a brand new Maxtor 80 Gig with Windows 98 SE to be installed. I actually had to download Maxtor's hard drive utility PowerMax v. 4.21 to clear the drive. I wouldn't buy another Western Digital since they don't last a year for me! But they have their own utility to run. I used to chuck these but learned that they could be useful. ;)

I have Partition Magic, but sometimes when you have a problem, that will give you problems when you need to use a boot disk. Don't use their Boot Magic, because the boot disks created with them don't seem to work. Or I had messed up disks. :rolleyes:

[dirtysouthrapco]

Is it a NTFS of FAT file system? I'd get a boot disk, fdisk in, delete the partion, recreate it format it and try again. Good luck.