Brain dead, I killed it

[genes]

Upgrading Packard Bell Pent 250 that worked fine. Installed larger hard drive from another computer, reformatted, and upgraded to win98, but had config.sys error. Tried to correct with Norton boot disk, but it had bios or other entries from the other computer that installed and killed the system. Now get black screen with flashing cursor that wont accept any input. How do I retrieve old bios setting or get into system. Any help appreciated.

[diurnal]

To me the hard drive is no compatible with the packard bell, upgrade your motherboard and processer and i guratee you it will work. Sorry. THe hard drive is just to big , the bios doesnt recognize the hard drive.Other ways around this is to go to the manufaturer of packard bell or the hard drive company and find a solution, but you will s ave time and a lot of hardship if you just upgrade.

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Sledgehammer will save the day!

[classicsoftware]

Welcome to the forum:

Let's not get ahead of ourselves. It may be sick, but I don't think it's dead.

Remove the "upgraded" hard drive and replace it with the original and see what happens. This should not have affected the bios.

If the old drive works, do the following:

1) Download the installation software for the "upgrade" hard drive from the manufacturer's site.

2)Create the bottable disk for the hard drive.

3) Install the "upgraded" hard drive as a slave or as the secondary master.
(You may need a new 100/66 mhz ide ribbon cable)

4) Boot to the floppy disk you prepared.

5) Set-up the new hard drive with the software. It will allow you to partition the drive any way you want and should overcome the limitations of the bios.

6) After setting up the hard drive, use the software to trasnfer the OS and all files to the new drive.

7) Remove the old drive and make the "upgraded" drive the primary master.

8) All done - new working hard drive ---

Good luck