kooky hard drive

I got as far as typing c prompt and kept getting message this is not drive or invalid. My old drive is master slave and C is that the problem? My cd isD and dvd is E so should I make this new one F? I will be putting the old one back in until I get files moved off it.................so? Thank you

 

Clo, I think I have done about all I can do to assist you here with this project you have undertaken.
I think you need to go back over all I have presented here in my quest in trying to help you.
I honestly do not know how I can make it more helpful.

Thanks Johanna for the comments
With your experience level you show here in your postings, I take that as a real compliment

What this Lady has undertaken is not an easy task for a "beginner" as she states she is.

If anyone is aware of anything I have left out, please speak up.

Daddad

 

Clo: I have some idea of the difficulties you are encountering. I think though, that DadDad has explained about all that can be explained.

One of the most important things he has told you is to take your old drive out of the machine. It cannot be in there as a master, or as you put it a "master slave" or anything else. You have never acknowledged that you have removed it, and you keep telling us how it is connected.

With that drive in the machine, you are fighting a losing battle. One of the frustrations of trying to help is giving advice and knowing it has not been followed.

If you are concerned about not being able to boot at all after following the instructions, I understand. But if you take the old drive out, you can do about anything you want to the new drive, if you mess up, take it out and put your old one back. It will boot your machine as if nothing ever happened.

If you want to get XP installed on the new drive, here is one way:

You should have only one hard drive in the machine, the new one, with the jumper set for master, IDE cable plugged in to the drive, then to the blue connector on the board, power cable plugged in and your Windows XP CD in your CD drive.

I am assuming that you have the new drive plugged in to the board's IDE channel 1. That should be the blue socket. If you have the drive plugged in to the RAID channel, go no further, either plug it in to the blue connector or post back for further instructions.

Start the machine, go into BIOS, go into Advanced BIOS.

If your old drive is still in the machine, don't bother.

When you go into the advanced bios, you see the boot devices listed, to change the order, use the keyboard up and down arrow to highlight the one you want to change, press enter, a menu will open allowing you to choose the boot order. "Boot Order" is the sequence that the BIOS follows to look for an operating system.

If your old drive is still plugged into the machine, don't bother doing this either.

So, in advanced bios, by using the keyboard up and down arrow keys, highlight "first boot device ", press enter, a menu will open. Run the little selection light up or down with the arrow key, when you have it in the brackets next to Floppy, press enter on your keyboard.

Next, do the same for second boot device, select "CD ROM" press enter, then third boot device, set for hard drive 0, press enter, then press escape. (keyboard)

Read the bottom of the BIOS page, what you want to do is save the changes and reboot the machine. Usually by pressing F10 and then enter.

Hopefully, Windows XP CD will boot the machine and allow you to format the new drive and install itself. So, as the machine restarts, you should get a prompt at the end of the bios that says: "press any key to boot from CD" It can go by quickly, so pay attention. If the machine boots from the CD, Click install, have your product ID ready, you will have to enter it. Also, if the CD is an upgrade from an earlier Windows, you will need the prior Windows installation CD. XP will ask for it. Follow the instructions for the installation carefully, and make sure you allow the format.

I know this is different than booting from the floppy, but, it might just work and worth a try. I have done a number of XP installations using this proceedure.

If you follow these instructions and the CD will not boot the machine, or if you need to install RAID drivers, post back.

But don't bother doing any of this if the old drive is still in the machine.

Martin

 

Hi Clo

Don't let me distract you from what the others are saying, but this may be some extra information for you.

You keep saying that the original drive is Primary Slave. There is an installation guide here for IBM drives (don't worry about it being from the Hiachti site, they market IBM drives now):
http://www.hgst.com/tech/techlib.nsf/techdocs/4DD4DCCA11DE5EB186256D6A0061C8A8
The original (10gb) may well be set (with the jumpers) as primary slave. Be carefull that you do not look at the drive "upside down ".

Partition and formatting guide:
http://www.hgst.com/tech/techlib.nsf/techdocs/E6F6028A3A58BEA286256D6A0060452D

Hope this helps
Matt

 

Hi Mattman: Nice find, thanks. Just yesterday I tried to format "D" on my daughter's machine. Didn't even think about having and remembering the page file was there, much trouble 'till I figured out what was going wrong. Wasted a lot of time. "Note:" on Hitachi site confirms what I discovered accidentally. Don't try to use "Disk Management ", "Drive Image" or "Partition Magic" to format or move partition with page file. You will get a whole bunch of "error" messages that seem to be written in greek.

Martin

 

I have never tried installing the 60 gb with the old drive in...I think my problem lies with the old drive as being primary slave on the "c" drive and the machine won't try accepting the 60 gb as primary MASTER on the c drive also. So I am thinking maybe the old drive has to become primay slave on another letter like f? Or does the new drive has to be on another letter like f and the old one stay as primay slave on c? My cd rom is "d" and the dvd is "e" I really want to do this just to know that after all this hassle that I can do it, plus I will have learned something great......thank you

 

Clo: Can you just tell me what happens when you do the following with only the 60gig drive plugged into the primary IDE connection at the motherboard with jumper set as "master "

Then you do this:

1. Set Bios to boot from CDROM
2. Put Windows XP CD in CD Rom Drive
3. Start Machine
4. When screen blinks: "Press any key to boot from cd ", you press a key
5. you sit back in your chair and wait a few minutes.

What if anything happens next?? Please be specific.

Martin

 

Got as far as boot from cd then it got as far as a black and white screen that apologized for not starting and said windows did not start correctly and gave a list of options safe mode.........safe mode with command prompts..........safe mode with networking.....start windows normally. I tried safe mode and same screen came back, then safe mode with command prompts, and then windows normally. each time it would turn all black and go back to the same screen of options. When I go the floppy disc route I get to the type in part so I type format c: hit enter and get the message "invalid drive specification" You do know from earlier posts that this 60 gb was loaded for me on another machine?So xp is on it already but with wrong motherboard etc.....we thought I would then be able to just put it in my bay and it would go, but of course thats not happening.........

 

I don't think you are booting from the cd if you are getting a message that windows did not start normally. Do you know how to go into BIOS and change the boot order so that your machine starts with the cd rather than the hard drive? I press F8 at the set up screen, and then use my up and down arrows and enter to make the cd the first boot device.

For the many others who are reading this thread- I don't want to confuse Clo more- I think I would install the larger hd in the primary position, take the old drive OUT, as Martinr121 explained eloquently, and with the boot order at A, CD then IDE, boot the comp from an ME boot floppy with NFDisk on it, Zero Zap it and then boot it from the XP cd and reinstall. Does that make sense? XP would find the generic Mobo drivers, and I would update all the drivers when I reached the desktop. Why does this project seem more complicated than it should be? Am I missing something?
Johanna

 

Clo: Are you getting the screen with the flashing "press any key to boot from CD" and hitting a key in a timely fashion? Do you have "Boot from CD" ahead of "HDD 0" in bios "? Like CD boot as device 2 and HDD 0 boot as device 3? Is the XP CD in the CD Drive?

Is HDD 0 on IDE channel 1 and not the RAID channel?

What you are describing sounds like the machine is trying to boot from the HDD, not the CD.

If you are doing these steps correctly and the machine is not reading the CD, I personally don't know how to be of any further help.

You could go back and read through this post, there are other suggestions that should work.

Good Luck,

Martin

 

Johanna, what you are saying makes absolute sense. The only thing I can figure, is earlier, Clo said there was a RAID option in BIOS boot order. So, if MOBO has RAID as boot, she has Drive 0 there, could give the results she is reporting, or maybe she should connect HDD 0 to RAID connector and try that. I dunno, it is a mystery to me.

Martin

 

Well, I'm back with my $.02 worth
Could it be that Lady Clo has a compleatly dead hard drive ?
Could she be forgetting to SAVE the changes she made in the bios to boot either from the floppy or the CDROM ??
After all this, I would have to ask Clo "who gave you that hard drive" and was it recognized in the "giver's machine "
Could she take it to the giver's machine and perform a normal DOS format with the boot disc clearing all traces of the prior XP installation.
Then put it back into her machine and proceed with the new XP install ?? (after making sure her machine's bios is set to boot first from the CDROM drive)
This saga continues

My thanks to Johanna and Martin for hanging in there with her on this one, I'm beginning to grasp at straws too.

And again, I have to ask Clo if she took the time to read all the links provided by myself and others??

Daddad

 

Hi DadDad, glad you jumped back into this very hot bath water.

Yes, it could be a completely dead hard drive, but wouldn't boot from CD start Windows install, then recognize dead drive by telling her can't find drive?

She has been instructed on the F10 for save a couple of times, we got to believe she is using it????

You're right, the machine that originally installed XP would be the best bet for format.

Why wouldn't the A prompts work on her machine, seems the machine boots ok from floppy. Seems to me that no matter what is on that 60gb drive, if properly connected, format should work.

I'm still suspicious that the RAID vs IDE is part of the problem. I've had plenty of experience mucking that one up, this machine had lots of problems recognizing drives, first with PCI RAID and then with integrated RAID on new MOBO. Reboot and Mattman saved my bacon on that.

My MOBO has integrated RAID, but those settings in my BIOS are after the boot settings, according to what Clo reported, her's are before. I don't know if that would make a difference, but the config she reported is correct for booting from IDE. (RAID\ATAPI\SCSI)

Anybody else want to chime in?

Martin

 

Daddad and Martinr121, I think we are all in agreement of what NEEDS to be done. I think what we have here is not a hardware issue, it's an operator one.

Clo, you need to print out this thread, follow instructions to the letter, and take notes in the margin of what did and didn't happen, at each step. Then we might be able to help. We are all thinking that you are not booting from the cd for the fresh XP install, and that is why your hard drive is not up and running yet.

Do not be intimidated by this thing- it's only a machine. Almost everyone here learned what they know through trial and error, just as you are doing now. (One of the great things about the BBS is that, with the combined resources of other comp whizzes, you can fix or fail your computer in a faster, more efficient way!)

I don't think you will have any problems if you print out Daddad's and Martinr121's instructions and then follow them exactly. If you do that, and still have a problem, we can help if you descibe exactly what is happening. But we have to do the basics, first. There's no point in making this harder than it is.

Johanna

 

I really felt I was following things to the letter.No body ever told me to check out CMOS. I got into the bios again....I went to CMOS clicked IDE primaster....enter.... up came choices. Manual was checked. I clicked AUTO enter and out to ADVANCED BIOS....clicked ...first boot master....auto.....second boot.....auto.....and put the cd rom in and things started coming up!!!!! I got as far as screen for : To set up winxp pro select enter
To create partition in unpartitioned space, press c
To delete patrition selection press D
existing partitions
unpartitioned space 8mb this is grayed out on bright blue screen.....
C: partition 1(NTFS) 58636mb (55497 mb free) so I hit enter for the grayed out choice which is 8 mb and got message that it was to small a space for xp pro. I read again instructions for clean install and could not find anything about that part..........so do I go for the c create partition? and if so how to and how much.......thank you people all so much you are wonderful for the OLD girl......

 

????????

I hope that is a miss print. Where I see MB I believe it should be GIG.

8 mb and got message that it was to small a space for xp pro.

That would for sure be true. 8 GIG would be fine.

BillyBob

 

No BillyBob, I don't think that is a misprint or typo.
What this lady has is a 60 GB hard drive that she wants to install Windows XP Pro OS on.

It now appears the HD may have come out of an OEM machine that someone gave to her.
That "unformatted" 8 Megs could be a tiny NON DOS partition put there by the OEM manufacturer for disk rescue.

If only Clo had realized just how close she came to finally achiving what she set out to do in this journey of hers

Had she chosen the 56 GB NTFS partition to install XP on, she would be finished by now !!
BTW, 56 GB sounds about right for the space available due to the inflated ways HD manufacturers rate their capacity.

Keep trying Clo, only this time try putting XP on the massive 56 GB partition.

Trying to install a 1+ GB operating system into an 8 Meg partition is like we used to say "packing a blivet"

Daddad

 

That "unformatted" 8 Megs could be a tiny NON DOS partition put there by the OEM manufacturer for disk rescue.


That is possible. And I did not think about that.

Had she chosen the 56 GB NTFS partition to install XP on, she would be finished by now !!


PLEASE tell me that the OS will not be installed to a 56gig partition. 6gig for the OS and do what ever with the rest.

With everything all on one partition there is no saftey or protection for backups, downloaded stuff etc.

BillyBob

 

BillyBob, I am fully aware of your position on multiple partitions after reading your many posts.
That is indeed your choice Sir

I think after all this lady has been through trying to get this project to a happy conclusion, she would welcome a single large partition with XP successfully installed just to say
"Hey, I did it !!"

Later on down the road, she can decide whether multiple partitions are for her as opposed to a single partition.

I chose NOT to even mention multi partitions to her at this point in time so as not to muddy the water any further for her.
She has been struggling as we all have trying to help her bring this project to a successful conclusion.

Daddad

 

Glory be!! Clo you are so close. Just one or two selections off. Note that when Windows greys out an entry, that means it will not work.

Go back to where you were and select create partition, given your level of experience I would let it take all the available space.

As you are going through these steps, stop and think about each choice the install program is going to offer you, keeping in mind what your final goal is. A clean install of XP. It is going to present a choice for formatting and wiping out everything on that drive. Do it. If it asks if you are sure, answer yes!

Have your product ID ready, you will need it.

I thought this was the most interesting part of your last post.

Your Bios is set up somewhat different than this machine's, maybe reason for part of confusion.

I wish you good luck on completing the installation. It will be quite an accomplishment for you and us. Please post back when you are using the new install.


Martin