Hard Drive Connected, Everything Shuts Down

That is a form of formatting, I still recommend that you delete the partition...for the system drive (C: ), but not the hidden partition because you might need it. If for instance, the installation disk has a scratch on it and it is not completely readable, it may never work. You might still be able to install from the hidden partition. If all your efforts fail, you might need to order an installation disk(s) from Emachines.

If you deleted the partition, it should show up as "unallocated ", you will then need to make a partition on it and select how much of the space you want to use to make the new partition (select all of it). You need to make it a primary partition. You might be asked to "initialise" or "make it active ", choose yes. After that you will be asked to format it, select the NTFS format and do a normal format, not a "quick format ".

When you have your new partition, maybe do a check that it looks right, then run the Windows installation again.

Matt

 

I used extended fdisk deleted partition c and initialised it, using the whole partition, at first it was fat32 then changed the partition type to ntfs. it seemed to happen so instant that im not sure i did it right i thought it would be time consuming such as the one pass zero took a while. so now should i boot with the installation disk?

D: Inactive Primary 10245MB HPFS/NTFS
C: Active Primary 294998MB HPFS/NTFS

....ok now it is writing the changes to the hard drive..thanks

 

well, now it says the operating system is missing and the hard drive may be infected with a virus...hm. under mini windows xp in the windows explorer file the c local disk doesnt show what size or free space it has. the recovery partition shows up fine. should i try to boot from the recovery and would i make it active and make the c inactive? though i dont think it took very long to write the changes. should it have taken hours? under mini xp is asks if i want to format the c: partition. when i format it should it be 8 sectors per boot, 16 root entries, 8 sectors per cluster?

 

This is a little mind bending The installation ran ok, but now the drive/OS seems to have disappeared. The Windows installation has probably altered something in the MBR (Master Boot Records) and now the BIOS thinks there might be a virus there. It might be a virus, it might be something like a rootkit. The installer might not have liked the way the partition was made and/or formatted.

You are doing extremely well and don't get any intentions of panicking.

Under the heading Utilities -> "Reformat Partitions" in WD Lifeguard (page 13)
http://www.wdc.com/en/library/eide/2779-001005.pdf
Reformat the C: drive and try the installation again. Be careful if Lifeguard talks about making/remaking partitions, because it seems that it will first delete all of the partitions on the HDD, including the recovery partition.

Matt
PS Leave "Cluster size" as default.

 

the options under utilities are to copy a partition or to set hard drive size, under setting up a hard drive tab the mother board controller tab shows primary and secondary drives open and under the unknown controller tab the drive shows up as BIOS drive (80 hex) 320 gbytes. the hard drive is connected to the mother board where the Serial ATA connections are arranged as four possible. there is an error loading os without installation disk. this is after allocating all the memory to partition c with paragon partition. when loading os from disk it still shuts down. with the installation disk F9 leads to windows setup [ems enabled], then starts to load that shuts down. whew! set the c partition inactive and the recovery as active started to load then shut down. is it possible that erasing the whole thing and starting over will be a better solution, maybe the whole thing is corrupt. is it possible that there is a hard drive-motherboard inseparation like the old xbox configuration, like some key being read somewhere before the os starts? in the bios? it seems it doesnt matter what i do, windows will not load from anywhere. i used my old windowsME hard drive and it loaded almost normal like. the drivers werent all there for everything. the original emachines hard drive is allergic to vista.

 

You keep saying it shuts down, even with a different HDD.

My feeling is that the CPU is overheating or it has been damaged (probably by heat).

The user manual is not available for download, so I can't check it for what menus are available in the BIOS. See if there are any temperature readouts in the BIOS and if there are temperature settings for shutdown.

When you cleaned the case out, I hope you didn't take the heatsink off from over the CPU chip, if you did, you will need to replace the thermal compound between the heatsink and the chip.

Did you check that all the dust was removed from the heatsink.

Look at if it might be a heat problem.

Matt

 

First off, let me say i greatly appreciate the time you are taking to help me out! I couldn't have made it this far alone.

The WindowsMe hard drive works fine and doesn't shut down the system. The Vista hard drive still does not load.

The cpu temp is stated at 29 C. I did read not to remove the heat sink before I cleaned off the dust. I wasn't sure how to go about it at first.

Is the recovery partition a set of files to load Vista?

You mentioned a rootkit virus. Would that be in the recovery partition?

Thanks.

By The Way, what is it about a hard drive that has to be "personalized" for the use of specific operating systems?

 

You talked about using Fdisk and Paragon Partition, I was suggesting to reformat using Western Digital Lifeguard.

There is little information at the Emachines website. I expect the recovery partition could be used to reload the original operation system. I can't see a user manual to download, so I can't give you any specific instructions. I can just suggest you use the link I posted to the "unofficial" website to try and install from the recovery partition. At that website, they have some forums, try searching there.

Any virus/rootkit shouldn't be in the recovery partition, but it could be in the Master Boot Records, that is a sector on the HDD that contains all the partitioning and file information. If you wanted to scan it, you would need to connect the HDD into another computer (I would use a vista computer, Windows ME won't know what the NTFS partitions are and even Windows XP has trouble working with Vista partitions). You might be able to find a boot disk with an Antimalware scanner.

If the MBR is corrupted, there are utilities to run FIXMBR, but they may not be able to fix the MBR for an OEM computer with a recovery partition. I think you talked about deleting all the partitions (running a zero format), that is the final option, but the recovery partition is deleted. If you cannot install from the Windows installation disk, you will need to purchase a set of installation disks from Emachines.

It is not "personalised ", it is the OEM (Emachines) recovery partition system set up on the HDD.

Matt