Got some bad advice, need help to fix it!

[whatamidoing???]

I have a Blaster Board M003 that had an original 13GB HD, and a friend (who apparently knows less than thought!) installed Windows XP on it, and then realized that it took up most of the HD, so told me to go buy a new HD, which I did, a 120GB one, which now my computer won't recognize, and in the attempts to get it going, the computer is now needing the Windows XP to be reinstalled on the original HD.

Two questions:
1) Is it better for me to just try to reinstall my Windows 98 and start over with the old drive and once I get the new one recognized on the computer, to install Windows XP to the new one?

2) I found a bios download for my motherboard - and I've saved it to a floppy - not quite sure what to do now - do I just let the computer boot up and it'll automatically grab the info?? Do I have to get Windows 98 back up and running first?

So confused, not sure if this is enough info - so if you need more, please ask!

Thanks for any help you can give me - I need my computer to actually work!

 

[CTComputers]

DO NOT TRY TO UPDATE YOUR BIOS!!!! unless you have done work such as that before. Find a friend that really does know what hes doing and get him to flash your bios and update it. Also I have no idea what your friend did but I had a 12 GB hard drive running Windows XP and still had a massive amount of storage space. Windows XP Pro only take up about 1.5 - 2 gb of hard drive space. Let me know how things work out.

Good Luck
CTComputers

 

[Lostman]

Hmmmm.

Sounds like your board is old as hell.

Keep your XP install on the small drive, set it to master on IDE 1. Take the big drive and set it to slave on IDE 1.

Now your OS is on one, boot to it, go into My computer (or win key + E) and right click and format the big drive to FAT32. All done.

 

[Blueman]

Ok first off are you sure the drive is a 13 gig, and not a 1.3 gig drive. If it's a 1.3 then xP will not work, reload Win98. If it's a 13 gig then continue one brother.

Sounds to me like your friend might have partitioned your drive too small. If they did not partition the whole drive then you can do two different things, you can make an extended partition to load your software on, or you can repartition the drive with one big partition.

You can probably get away with running XP on your old system (it's dated if it can't recognize a 120 gig drive) by just booting to the CD, removing the existing partition, and then make a new one for the full size of the drive. CTComputers is right, XP doesn't need over 2 gig's of space.

One last thing, you might be able to use the 120 gig drive on your older system if you buy a PCI IDE controller add-on card. They don't cost much, and as long as you have a free PCI slot you are good to go!

Best of luck!

 

[whatamidoing???]

Thanks all! I had a friend (a different one) update the bios, and then I just had to reinstall xp, and it's up and running again!