Urgent! Bios Dead!

[EricB]

I couldnt find any control drivers the ones i did find were for intel chipsets. Iv decided to reformat this week but can I format my hard drive in windows? and would that automatically fix my missing space as i have service pack 2 now? I also ran chkdsk which didnt do anything either. And im finding my comp running slower than usual so i think it`ll be best to format again. If i got a windows service pack 2 installation disk but used my serial would that work? and would it fix my hard drive problem using that cd?

it will if it is a windows xp disc that has sp2.

if it is a sp2 disc by itself. you can't do anything with formatting. you will have to slipstream that disc with your xp disc

Autostreamer makes it easy for you. just stick both disc in the cd-roms and follow the simple instructions and it will rip an xp sp2 .iso file to your hard drive and you can use a program like alcohol, nero or roxio to burn it as a disc image

 

[baronvongogo]

thanks its windows xp cd that has service pack 2 so hopefully all will be well. Thankyou all for helping i guess iv learned the hard way to back up always and dont upgrade a bios unless fully understanding what could happen.

 

[EricB]

thanks its windows xp cd that has service pack 2 so hopefully all will be well. Thankyou all for helping i guess iv learned the hard way to back up always and dont upgrade a bios unless fully understanding what could happen.

no problem. let us know how it goes

 

[twstokes]

Here's what I would do in your situation:

1. Find out the exact model number / manufacturer for your hard drive

2. Look on your HD Manufacturer's website for this issue (they've seen this tons of times)

3. Make sure your BIOS is seeing the full size of the drive

4. If the BIOS sees the correct size, then it's Windows and or drivers

They'll probably tell you just to make sure that you have at least Service Pack 1 installed (it enables 48-bit LBA support).

Go through the format process by putting in the XP CD and deleting your current XP partition.

I would also recommend that you format the new drive partition as NTFS, as you would probably notice a perfomance gain.

After installing Windows, if you have the SP2 CD just pop it in and go through the install process. After SP2 (or at least SP1) is installed, you should be able to see the correct amount of space.

Good Luck!

 

[EricB]

Here's what I would do in your situation:

1. Find out the exact model number / manufacturer for your hard drive

2. Look on your HD Manufacturer's website for this issue (they've seen this tons of times)

3. Make sure your BIOS is seeing the full size of the drive

4. If the BIOS sees the correct size, then it's Windows and or drivers

They'll probably tell you just to make sure that you have at least Service Pack 1 installed (it enables 48-bit LBA support).

Go through the format process by putting in the XP CD and deleting your current XP partition.

I would also recommend that you format the new drive partition as NTFS, as you would probably notice a perfomance gain.

After installing Windows, if you have the SP2 CD just pop it in and go through the install process. After SP2 (or at least SP1) is installed, you should be able to see the correct amount of space.

Good Luck!

the problem with is..

his original xp cd is obvious the one with no service packs.
he should be fine with the xp sp2 cd

 

[baronvongogo]

thanks guys im going to format in about 4 hours time i shall post back how it goes, although i will note my bios also only recognises my hard drive as 130gb so hopefully after xp sp2 install it will change.

 

[EricB]

thanks guys im going to format in about 4 hours time i shall post back how it goes, although i will note my bios also only recognises my hard drive as 130gb so hopefully after xp sp2 install it will change.

what the name of your hard drive and your mobo? how old is your mobo?

 

[baronvongogo]

my hard drive is a SATA maxtor 6b200m0 200Gb, my motherboard is socket 939 gigabyte GA-K8NF-9 n force4. And im using award bios F7.

 

[twstokes]

It looks like your problem isn't Windows / drivers, it's your BIOS.

This page will tell you what you need to know.

Basically, you have three options:

1. Updating BIOS to support the larger drive

2. Purchase an ATA controller card

3. Use the MaxBlast software provided by Maxtor


If you BIOS doesn't read your hard drive's full capacity, your OS isn't going to read it either without some software or hardware help. (controller card or something like EZ-Bios or MaxBlast)

If your PC could originally see the 200GB, possibly you had the MaxBlast software on there before and it was erased in the format.

 

[EricB]

i'm thinking now that the xp cd screwed everything up for 2 reasons

1.that is a new mobo
2.sata controller came in already recognizing bigger drives.

check your mobo wedsite to see if the mobo had a bad bios. maybe when you flashed it, it messed something up

but try this anyway

boot from your maxtor cd. format and partition your drive from there
put your xp cd in. when you get to the install screen (where you can delete and partition drives) pick the "use the existing format" option (it says something like that). then install xp