boot lock-up after hdd installation

[gerrut]

After I installed a new 10,2 Gb harddisk on my P133, my system just stopped after giving the serial number of the drive. The BIOS also recognised the drive only as a 8,4 Gb harddisk. What can I do about it? Does anyone know whether a harddisk up to 8,4 Gb works or do I have to buy harddisks smaller than 2,1 Gb?

[StoneDragon]

Some of those older machines will only accept up to an 8.4 gig drive appearantly. Did the drive come with an install disk? Some drives come with an overlay program that will allow you to install a larger drive on an old bios. The only problem that I have run into with the overlay is that windows scandisk doesn't want to work anymore.... have to use Norton utilities to do a scan disk.

[gerrut]

Originally posted by StoneDragon:
Some of those older machines will only accept up to an 8.4 gig drive appearantly. Did the drive come with an install disk? Some drives come with an overlay program that will allow you to install a larger drive on an old bios. The only problem that I have run into with the overlay is that windows scandisk doesn't want to work anymore.... have to use Norton utilities to do a scan disk.

I'm afraid that won't work because my computer won't boot from a floppy when I've installed the hard disk. It just won't do anything when the new hdd is in the computer.

[Jerkymom]

Is the new hard drive the only one in the case or are you slaving it to your old drive? Until you get things working, let the new drive be by itself on end of the ribbon cable, jumpered as Master. Since the boot hangs at detecting it, sounds like something isn't hooked up right. Check to be sure the jumper is correctly set and that the cable is attached with the pin 1's facing in the right direction on both motherboard and hard drive ends.

If the new drive is empty and hasn't been fdisked and formatted it won't boot to a C:\> prompt, but the idea here is to get the boot past detecting the hard drive and then on to detecting the floppy drive. Once that happens you can reboot with the startup floppy and proceed with your format and OS install. Remember to set the partition active when you run fdisk.

StoneDragon is right about some older machines not recognizing anything over 8.4 gig. It's a BIOS limitation, but it can be over-ridden by an overlay program from your hard drive manufacturer, usually available by online download. Otherwise you're stuck with using only 8.4 gig of the 10.2 gig available.

Please keep us updated and we'll be glad to help as much as we can... http://www.PCGuide.com/ubb/smile.gif

Kim

[gerrut]

Originally posted by Jerkymom:
Is the new hard drive the only one in the case or are you slaving it to your old drive? Until you get things working, let the new drive be by itself on end of the ribbon cable, jumpered as Master. Since the boot hangs at detecting it, sounds like something isn't hooked up right. Check to be sure the jumper is correctly set and that the cable is attached with the pin 1's facing in the right direction on both motherboard and hard drive ends.

If the new drive is empty and hasn't been fdisked and formatted it won't boot to a C:\> prompt, but the idea here is to get the boot past detecting the hard drive and then on to detecting the floppy drive. Once that happens you can reboot with the startup floppy and proceed with your format and OS install. Remember to set the partition active when you run fdisk.

StoneDragon is right about some older machines not recognizing anything over 8.4 gig. It's a BIOS limitation, but it can be over-ridden by an overlay program from your hard drive manufacturer, usually available by online download. Otherwise you're stuck with using only 8.4 gig of the 10.2 gig available.

Please keep us updated and we'll be glad to help as much as we can... http://www.PCGuide.com/ubb/smile.gif

Kim

As I've already said before, he won't boot at all. Not even from a bootdisk. If you still have the old drive with it the BIOS won't detect the new one and just start booting from the other or floppy.I've changed jumper settings to all possible modes and the disk just won't work. It's not a question whether I can get the 10,2 Gb working but what size it will accept.