Windows XP Pro installation problem

[pdxsk8er]

Hey,

Every time I go to setup XP Pro it says that the format done by Max Blast 4 is not formatted correctly, or not formatted at all and says it can only format 32.2GB of my 200GB hard drive, and I partitioned it into two partitions of 120.1GB and 83.4GB. The Max Blast 4 program won't even format in a true format time... I mean 10 seconds doesn't sound reallistic... I need to see at least 20 minutes of true format time. Then after every reformat with Max Blast 4 that I do, it still says that it is isn't a correct format inside of the XP Pro setup.
What Do I Do?

 

[Osiris]

the best to do this is to use win 98 bootdisk. www.bootdisk.com See what happens

 

[pdxsk8er]

That didn't work either.

 

[BASSMASTER]

How didn't it work?

You downloaded the bootdisk file, made a boot disk, booted from it, repartitioned, formatted, re-installed Windows from the CD...


How far did you get?

 

[pdxsk8er]

It would let me get that far, but let me redownload it maybe the first time I downloaded it, it became corrupted some how! How I don't know either!

 

[pdxsk8er]

I tried it again and the same thing came up... Disk error and that it wasn't a system disk! Well I guess I'll use Partition Magic 8.0 and see what happens.

 

[KSoD]

Hoe old is the BIOS. I remember when i built my old machine i had to make sure the partition of my drives were smaller than 120 so that my BIOS could recognize them. Maybe make the partitions 100GB or less and see if that helps. Some BIOS just can read drives that are that large.

 

[pdxsk8er]

It is second to newest or third to newest... I think!
How do you back-up your bios?

 

[KSoD]

Go to the mobo manufactorers site they should have the utilties to either Flash your BIOS there or you should be able to download a utility to flash your BIOS on a reset. Wither that or it will give you the files that you need to put onto a floppy and flash it yourself. But nowadays they ahve the utilties to do it so i would search for those first.

 

[pdxsk8er]

Oh, I just looked at my bios version and I have the new current bios availlable.