New, confused, desperate, STUBBORN...

[Jayce]

This may turn into a long story, my apologies if that happens...

Once upon a time I decided to add some additional storage space to the hard drive. I have a 4 year old Gateway 1.1ghz amd athlon 512 ram. It had a pair of hard drives in it, a 20 gig and 40 gig. I took the 20 out and took a plunge and got a Maxtor 200 gig. So, I had a 200 and 40 in there.

Problem is for whatever reason I was restricted to 137 gig, which boiled down to about 131 usable gig. I was trying to figure out how to partitian it seeing as though I'm very unfamiliar with it. I found a thorough tutorial on google.com and followed the directions. Turns out they partitian their hard drive by formatting the drives and reinstalling them through windows after booting off of the XP CD. Anyway, I booted from the windows XP cd and found myself at this screen like the directions said. I saw the two available partitians listed, the 200 gig and the 40 gig. It said if I wanted to create a new one to highlight the emtpy slot and hit C. So, I did that. However, there's no empty slot. It appeared as if the only two slots were used by the 200 and 40 gig hard drive I had. I don't know what to do.

I ended up taking the 40 out and restarting all over again with the 200. I deleted the partitian so I was left with nothing and redid it again. I went through and added a partitian of 100 gig. I figured I could just split it in half, a pair of 100 gig sections. Well, I set up the first one, however when I went back to set up the second 100 gig section, after hitting enter it automatically went back to 31 gig. It's like the PC absolutely restricts it to 131 gig.

I'm lost and have no where to turn. What can I do? If at all possible, I'd like to split this hard drive into a pair of 100 gig sections and also have the 40 gig hard drive running as well for a grand total of 240 gig hard disk space. Any help is appreciated!!

 

[m3trj]

You need to update to XP SP1 at least and format the drive in Windows and it should all appear.

 

[PatrickK]

is this IDE or SATA? It could be that if the drive is IDE, something is incompatible. I've never had this problem with my SATA's.

 

[Jayce]

I tried upgrading to SP1. I don't know if I'm doing something wrong or what, but I tried doing it both through automatic updates and by going to windows.com and searching around for it. Can anyone post me a direct link?

The windows xp CD I have is old, it's like the original version. The upstairs computer, a dell, came with all of the software etc etc. I put that CD in which was SP1a, and tried upgrading to that. Now my gateway reads that there are 2 windows versions, XP home and XP pro. When I select XP home, it says something is goofed up as far as the filing... I don't know.

Can anyone post me a direct reliable link to SP1 or SP2? (assuming I can DL SP2 without needing SP1 first). This has been very irritating and only makes my college workload seem more and more, since I need to fix the PC before I can use it for assignments.

 

[Jayce]

Okay, wtf.

I just formatted the 200 gig hard drive. I reinstalled windows on it. I still have the limited space to deal with. I DO have service pack one, for an absolute fact. It's Windows XP Home Service Pack 1.

Just tell me what to do here... I'd rather not have to call anybody to walk me through this, considering I don't speak spanish, ethiopian, turkish, well you get the idea...

By the way, I can't figure something out. WHY, OH WHY is it when I start windows that I have THREE Microsoft Windows Home Edition options listed????????????

 

[Jayce]

I installed SP1 and some other driver that I found in the search function of this site. I found another thread where another guy had the exact same kind of Maxtor HD I had and they told him to get SP1 and some kind of driver.

After installing that and restarting my computer responded with "Error Loading OS." If I unhook that hard drive (the 200 gig) and run it JUST off of my 40 gig, then I get a missing error message.

Either way, Windows won't start. To think, 4 days of not having a PC working right all because of a hard drive... This is pathetic, I'm on the verge of getting a new one.

I can get to DOS with the recovery CD in though. What is the DOS command to shut down/crash/format the system so I can reinstall what I need to and get back into windows? Note: I'm stuck at the D:/ at DOS. I can't change it to C, unless there's a command I'm not seeing.

 

[PZEROFGH]

thats why people dont get maxtor drives. ahhh.

anyways what type of hdd is it

IDE OR SATA!!

 

[beardo526]

I had this problem with a computer I was working on in school. All we had to do was flash the BIOS to the newest version and everything worked fine.

(This next part is probably irrelevant, but it's good to know anyway). Double check that you're formatting using NTFS instead of FAT32. Here's some info from the Microsoft Support website about FAT32 limitations:

"You cannot format a volume larger than 32 gigabytes (GB) in size using the FAT32 file system during the Windows XP installation process. Windows XP can mount and support FAT32 volumes larger than 32 GB (subject to the other limits), but you cannot create a FAT32 volume larger than 32 GB by using the Format tool during Setup. If you need to format a volume that is larger than 32 GB, use the NTFS file system to format it. Another option is to start from a Microsoft Windows 98 or Microsoft Windows Millennium Edition (Me) Startup disk and use the Format tool included on the disk."

 

[Jayce]

I did read that somewhere recently. When I put my computer's serial number into the Gateway support documents my computer's information came up despite the fact it was 5 years old. It showed that it originally had a 20 gig 5400 rpm HD, type of motherboard, etc etc etc. I did some digging in the motherboard section and it said Note: This can be flashed to a newer version.

For one, I don't know how to do that... Is there a how-to tutorial?

Here's my hard drive, I even bought it from staples. I got it on sale for a lot cheaper though.

http://www.staples.com/webapp/wcs/s...10051&langId=-1&productId=88043&cmArea=SEARCH

By the way, what's so bad about Maxtor hard drives? I spoke to a few people and got mixed reviews. Mixed reviews meaning, everyone spoke very highly of them assuming they don't hit any roadblocks as I have... Other than that a lot of people gave them a thumbs up.

NEW PROBLEM:

Here's the deal. I have three hard drives. The original IBM 20 gig hard drive, which I'm not using, I have the 40 gig Western Digital hard drive that we upgraded to like 3 years ago, and I also have the new Maxtor 200 gig hard drive.

When I unplug ALL of the hard drives and plug in the Maxtor 200 gig hard drive ONLY and boot up the computer, it says "Error Loading OS."

When I unplug ALL of the hard drives and plug in the Western Digital 40 gig hard drive ONLY and boot up the computer, it says "NTLDR is missing. Press Alt Ctrl Del to restart."

So either way with either hard drive, I CANNOT get past the error barrier that I spoke about above.

Now I spoke to my cousin, despite the fact he's about 600 miles away and hard to get ahold of with our conflicting schedules (he works day shift, I work night shift + full time college) he's a master at what he does. He told me that something is seriously wrong, and I should try to boot off of the Windows XP disc in order to do a fixboot or something or another. Anyway, the computer won't even give me the option to boot off of the disc. He instructed me to get into the BIOS... Well, here's problem 287 on the list! I can't get into my BIOS. PERIOD. I even spoke to a Gateway rep who looked up my serial number and said with that particular motherboard the key I should be hitting to get into the BIOS is either F1 or F2. Neither work. None of the F-keys work, Delete doesn't work, nothing, period. To me, I cannot get into my system BIOS. I tried everything.

Here's my thoughts:

We have a 2 year old Dell computer upstairs. We = it's the family computer. Here's what I'm thinking... I'm thinking that I should unplug the hard drive of the upstairs Dell computer and plug in the Maxtor 200 gig hard drive, or even the Western Digital 40 gig hard drive that I'm having problems with. (remember, each one has it's own problem, but with either problem I can't get past it).

So I'm thinking of going upstairs and installing Windows XP THROUGH the Dell computer onto the VERY hard drive(s) I want to use for the downstairs Gateway. Then, put the hard drive back into the Gateway. When I would boot up, since the Dell would of installed everything I needed, wouldn't I be right by saying the Gateway should EASILY boot up?

At this point I'm so aggrivated over this I'm about to just go out and buy a low end Dell or Gateway tower and just upgrade it later on. Being without a computer as a full time college student is not really an option right now... Since I also work full time, I have limited time to cart my rear end all around campus (where I commute to, so it's not like I can walk outside and go down to the library) to use their computers.

ANY help would be appreciated... I'm desperate.

 

[beardo526]

I did some digging in the motherboard section and it said Note: This can be flashed to a newer version.

For one, I don't know how to do that... Is there a how-to tutorial?

www.google.com

I took the liberty of googling it for you and found a pretty good site for this: http://www.pcnineoneone.com/howto/biosflash1.html

Just to make myself feel better, here's a quote from that site...

Why would you need to flash the BIOS?

The most popular reasons that cause people to flash the BIOS are...

* Support for newer processors - The BIOS allows the motherboard to accept processors up to a certain speed. Since you got the computer, the top speed of the processor type your computer accepts has increased. You decide to replace your processor with a faster one, but the BIOS does not recognize it or does not have the right settings. Upgrading the BIOS can resolve this problem.
* Support for bigger hard drives - The BIOS allows the motherboard to accept hard drives up to a certain size. Since you got the computer, the maximum size for hard drives has increased. You decide to install a newer and bigger hard drive, but the BIOS does not recognize it or only recognizes part of the drive. Upgrading the BIOS can resolve this problem.
* Bug fixes - The BIOS contains certain features and options, but one of them does not function properly or not at all. Since you got the computer, the manufacturer has recognized and corrected the problem with a new BIOS version. Upgrading the BIOS can resolve this problem.