fdisk issue/error/hangs up at Checking Disk integrity -- HELP

[JJordan]

I am put together a computer for my sister. I was given a Pentium 233 without a hard drive in it. It is an AT motherboard to the extent that matters. I removed all of the PCI and ISA cards except the video card. I also had an old 486 computer with a 1.6 gig Seagate drive on it that had Windows 95 installed. I took the drive out to put in the &quot;new&quot; computer. When I try to run fdisk, I selected large drive support (even though it is < 2gigs) and deleted the primary DOS partition (the only partition on the drive). When I went back in to create the partition and set it as active, the program first performs an operation where it says it is checking the disk. That runs through OK, although very slow, the partition is created and the next step which asks the size you want for primary partition and if you want to set it as active. I set the size as all of it and yes too the active, but when it tries to check the disk again, it stays at ZERO percent complete -- nothing happens (8 hours later nothing had happened - over night). It seems locked up. I tried this 3 times -- same result. I tried formatting the drive and that does not work (obviously the partitioning is not done).

Any ideas what is wrong ?

 

[TonyT]

Load up the BIOS and select &quot;detect IDE Hard Drives&quot;. After the BIOS properly configures and recognizes the drive, you should be home free.

 

[JJordan]

The drive does show up in the BIOS ???? I am not sure what you mean.

 

[TonyT]

I remember a few days ago someone was having a problem partitioning a hard drive which was taken from another computer. The only difference was, the computer the person was putting the drive into had a different hard drive installed previously, so every time the person tried to partition the drive, it would freeze up, thinking that a different size drive was present in the computer.

After rereading your post, however, I become unsure as to whether the two problems are related. If the computer you're building never had a hard drive in it, then this might not solve the problem. If so, then I'm sorry I couldn't help.

 

[JJordan]

It did have a hard drive with Windows 98 installed on the computer. The person that gave me the computer wanted the hard drive in his new computer with all info intact, so I offered to move it if he would give me the rest of the &quot;junk&quot; he was going to get rid of any way (which he agreed to do).

 

[TonyT]

Are you sure that, within the BIOS itself, the correct drive is configured? If you didn't manually go into the BIOS and have it auto-detect the new drive, that could be causing the problem.

 

[JJordan]

I will check and see -- that is in the BIOS under detect ide hard drive or something like that isn't it (I am at work, the computer is at home). I have never done that, will it tell me what to do in that part of the BIOS ? Thanks for the help by the way.

 

[TonyT]

You are correct; that's exactly where you want to go. There really shouldn't be anything to it, just make sure that &quot;auto&quot; or &quot;auto-detect&quot; is selected for IDE type (the name might be different depending on your BIOS). Good luck, and keep me posted.