Need help with hard drive issue

[NanoWarrior]

I have recently obtained a hard drive that was once part of a Compaq Presario computer. I am trying to get this hard drive to work in a custom computer. But when I tried to boot the custom computer up that I put the hard drive into it says something like it couldn't find the hard drive. Even when I put in the windows XP disc, so I can re format it there ( not through console on disk), it says that it can't find the hard drive.

I was able to re format the hard drive through the console in my windows xp disk though. That finished, but when I try to boot the custom computer up after that, now it says "NTLDR is missing, Press ctrl+alt+Del to restart".

Anyone know what I can do to get this hard drive to work in the custom computer I put it into? Or is there something with hardware that were previously in computer sellers computers (like HP, compaq) that don't want you to use them in other systems?

Thanks

 

[dma11]

Check this
http://www.computerhope.com/issues/ch000465.htm

 

[NanoWarrior]

Thanks for the link, yeah, turns out all I needed was the full version disc of windows XP to get it to format the hard drive. Though I am having one more problem.

The hard drive I have in the custom computer is a 250 gb hard drive. But when I check it in the My Computer window and click on the hard drive icon, it only says that I have 127 gb of storage in total. Why is this?

 

[Osiris]

Do you have SP2 installed? What does device managemet tell you?

 

[TheMajor]

There's a registry key u need to edit to get around the 127GB barrier. Google for it or download X-Setup to change it: http://www.x-setup.net/

 

[NanoWarrior]

Thank you both for the feedback, I installed X - setup and I went into Classic > Hardware > Hard Disk > 48 bit LBA. I meet the requirements of the warning, and I tried to enable 48 bit LBA but the computer still doesn't recognize the full 250gb but still 127gb. I went to http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;303013 and it seems to want me to access the windows regristry, I don't know how to access it.

 

[TheMajor]

Start>run>regedit