Hardrive is being read as my old hardrive..?

[platinumike]

I have a western digital caviar 120gb hardrive. My mobo blew, and while I awaitied a new one to ship I decided to take my hardrive and stick itin my old p2 266 system. The first time I started it up it asked for the system disk. I said oh well I should reformat anyway, but then I restart it again and hop into bios, its being read as a 9gb hardrive which I think is what was in there previously before. Now my new mobo arrives, system is all connected and its being read as a 9gb hardrive! what kinda wannabee hardrive is this. The warranty is still good, so if worst comes to worst Ill rma it, but I'd like to try to get it working asap seeing that Im already behind a week of work.

Here are my other specs:
athlon xp mobile 2500
abit nf7-s2
256mb pc3200(gave away my 512 stick)
bfg 6800gt

 

[olds]

I am not real clear on what you did.
If your OS was installed on the 120GB it shouldn't be expected to work in a different machine as a boot drive. The mobo drivers (chipset, etc) are wrong for the different mobo.
If you used it as a second hdd I don't see what would have changed.

 

[platinumike]

Ya, it is my only hardrive. Im trying to reinstall windows on it, so I can fidel with it in windows, but the windows cd keeps crashing with some new hardware notice.

 

[olds]

Are you still trying to install it on your old mobo or the new one?
Since you are formatting, are you using WDs installation software in DOS?

 

[platinumike]

im trying to install it on the new mother board:abit nf7-s2. How am I supposed to get into dos? I tried pusing f8 at startup but it doesnt do anything. Windows cd keeps crashing :-(