Just fired up new computer --- Three questions -- For now!!

[FOH]

Just finished new computer and turned it on for the first time and have three questions. Here is the setup:

Abit KR7A 133R
AMD XP2100
256MB x 2 Muskin PC 2100 DDR
ATI Radeon 8500DV
Maxtor 60G x 2 on onboard raid.

Now the questions:

1. FDISK shows 48GB total hard drive space instead of 120GB. I am using a old FDISK disk that I have, I assume that the newer FDISK utility will support the larger drive??? If I am correct in this, can someone please direct me to a place to download a new version so I can format and partition???

2. When I first turned it on, I had nothing -- no beep, no sound, no video -- nothing. I tried to clear the CMOS -- still nothing. Then I remembered, I had changed the hard drive jumpers from cable select (factory setting) to master. I put it back to cable select and it came right on -- no problems. The hard drives are on RAID IDE channels by themselves -- I have always used the master setting in this situation, but I have never used Maxtor hard drives before. Why would the jumpers need to be on cable select instead of master? Why would that keep the computer from posting or beeping or something?? (Opps -- sorry that was two questions -- sorry!! )

3. After it came on, I noticed the memory size showed 1048576K. I put in 512MB of memory. Is it showing double that because of the Double Data Rate??



THANKS!!!

 

[Wolfsraider]

use the max blaster software if that doesnt work get the
ez bios from western digitals site or try bootdisc.com for newer fdisk those are the only ones I know of that work

#2?could be a bios setting?

#3can't help you sorry never seen that before]

hope this helps on fdisk

 

[aka1nas]

1) You should be using the utility for your RAID controller to set up the discs. What OS are you using? If it is 2000 or XP, then you dont need to use Fdisk, you can use the install program to prepare the disks.

2) Some onboard RAID controllers seem to have this problem. Is the controller a Promise chip by any chance? My Soyo dragon has the same problem with its integrated Promise chip and so have other users with diff mobos.

3)That is weird, DDR does not do that. Check your modules, maybe they gave you 512MB sticks on accident or something. There is a way to translate all the numbers on them and figure out how many MB per chip you have. Do a search on the net for whatever manufacturer makes the chips.

 

[FOH]

Thanks for the replies. I have looked for and found several different formatting utilities and so far none of them have "seen" the full 120GB.

I am using Win98SE and I have loaded it with no problem, but have not been able to use the full hard drive size. Now here is a real weird problem -- I thought I would start over and partition and format straight from a Win 2000 disk, so I changed first boot device to CD-ROM and restarted. Win 2000 stared to load like normal but then it said it could not find any hard drives. I tried every way I knew how but couldn't get it to load. FDISK and Win 98 "sees " the hard drives no problem (just the wrong size). What could cause this????

Also I tried setting the hard drives to master, and it came on like normal, but no difference in Win 2000 ability to see the hard drives. It is weird that the first time I turned this computer on, with the jumpers to master, I got nothing -- no video, no beeps, nothing, but the fans running. Then I changed the hard drive jumpers to cable select and it came on like normal. Now it will boot in master position and I am wondering why changing from master to cable select made a difference the first time???

EDIT: I forgot to tell you -- I also tried the MaxBlaster format utility from Maxtor (since I have Maxtor drives), and it couldn't find any hard drives to format either. Any ideas????????

 

[panhead49]

go ahead and use the win98 fdisk........it will work even though it dosent tell you the correct amount of space.....if you cut up your drive ...use percentages...thats what i do...

 

[swifty3]

I recently got the same setup as you, except smaller h/d's. at first i had some trouble getting my comp to see the h/d's, but i set one to master and the other to slave, and tried switching witch ide jack on the mobo that i plugged them into. after a while, i got them to work. but i cleared my CMOS and installed a clean version of win 2k. everything had been fine since. I also don't think my ide cables or power supply cables were plugged in properly when i first had problems. u might want to check those. hope this helps

 

[swifty3]

also, that is really weird that your bios reads a gig of ram instead of 512 mb. pull out the modules and read the label on them, see if they r really 512. never hurts to re-seat them too, especially on a new mobo where everything is pretty tight.

 

[AndyHui]

Check my FAT32 vs NTFS FAQ for the link to the new FDISK that can recognise larger hard drives.

 

[nortexoid]

AFAIK, each drive has to be set to master on separate channels on the RAID controller...try taht (if you havent' already)...

formatting w/ maxblast might not work granted those drives are on a RAID controller...apparently it didn't detect them (odd tho)...for NTFS partitions under 2k and xp, they set them up fine from the set up menu...the partitioning generally works for the largest drives, so...

if your comp is showing 1gb of memory, then u either have 1gb of memory or a faulty BIOS/mobo.

you won't get beep codes if your hdds are configured incorrectly...only if your mem, (sometimes) cpu, or video card are not in place or not passing the POST.

 

[FOH]

Thanks all for your help.

panhead49: I tried doing the % in FDISK and that worked great. It partitioned and formatted all 120GB. After that I tried to load W2K straight from the CD/ROM and it still did not find any hard drive. So I loaded Win98SE and it worked fine, then I put in the W2K disk and loaded it as a dual boot system, no problem. It still dosen't seem right that W2K or the Maxtor MaxBlaster would not recognize the hard drives??? Any ideas???

I took out one stick of my memory (256MB) and now the BIOS shows approx. 512 MB. The memory has 256MB sticker on them, but it also has a full heat sink on them, so I can't see the chips to see for sure what they are. Here is a link to the memory I am using. Anyone know how to tell for sure what I have (without taking it apart) so I would know if I got more than I paid for (I hope!!! ) or got a bad motherboard (I hope not )

 

[CubicZirconia]

What does a benchmarking utility like sandra say about the memory?

 

[IndyJaws]

Just an FYI regarding the fdisk problem. Microsoft has a good article in their Knowledge Base regarding this problem. If you use Win 95, 98 or 98SE boot disk, this is the result:



<< When you use Fdisk.exe to partition a hard disk that is larger than 64 GB (64 gigabytes, or 68,719,476,736 bytes) in size, Fdisk does not report the correct size of the hard disk.

The size that Fdisk reports is the full size of the hard disk minus 64 GB. For example, if the physical drive is 70.3 GB (75,484,122,112 bytes) in size, Fdisk reports the drive as being 6.3 GB (6,764,579,840 bytes) in size. >>



The full text plus a fix can be found here.

 

[IndyJaws]

Doh! :Q

Just pulled up Andy's faq on NTFS vs. FAT32 and noticed he already had a link to the same MS article.

Nevermind.

 

[AndyHui]

You don't think I would leave out something like that, do you??

 

[DeathByDuke]

is it 48GB per drive or for both? if its 48Gb per drive, then your stuck, i have a 20gb and a 40gb and they never ever add up to 20 and 40 cos of pathetic marketing. 120 is actually 120,000mb in REAL world numbers hence 120gb, computer numbers see a lot less. my 20gb is actually 18.6gb in computer numbers (1024kb a mb instead of 1000, so for each mb, you lose 24kb) and my 40gb is really 36.5gb. So in fact, the higher the drive is in real world numbers, the less it is in computer numbers. it's a bit like monitors. they say '17inch' when it actually 15.9 or 16 inches diagonally but a new law in the UK states that monitors should now say screen size horizontally and can only be called '17inch' if it measures EXACTLY 17 across. damn these kind of things really p***' me off.

 

[Pederv]

When you tried installing 2K, you did the F6 and drivers for the RAID controller right?
Maybe you got lucky and got some mislabeled RAM.

 

[FOH]

Pederv -- After I got it up and running with Win98 and loaded W2K as a dual boot, --yes I hit the F6 to load the raid drivers. BUT when I was trying to load W2K by itself and use it to partition and format, I couldn't get to the point of loading the raid drivers, because W2K couldn't find any hard drives!!!

AndyHui and IndyJaws -- I looked at the MS page you linked to. I had already found and tried that. It did help, but it did not fix the problem. Before, my old FDISK was only seeing 48G of the 120G (so it was seeing 64G and was reporting what was left-- 48G) after I downloaded the "fix" it only saw 11G (so it was seeing around 100G and reporting what was left -- 11G). So using the "fix" and partitioning using MB, I could only partition 11G --- worse than before!!! BUT I did what -- panhead49 -- said and used % instead of MB, and that worked great. At one point as I was partitioning, it said I had 1.5G left to use, I put in a partition size of 26% and it gave me almost a 30G partition!! Weird, but it works!! My main question is still why W2K and Maxtor's MaxBlaster can't find the hard drives when FDISK and Win98 do with no problem???? I just want to make sure my motherboard is O.K. especially since it reports the memory size wrong also.

CubicZirconia -- I have never ran any benchmarking utility, like sandra, but I will look into it to see what it says. In the mean time, I am still looking for a way to verify what memory I have for sure. Any ideas???

 

[DBandit]

go to control panel, then click on system, it should tell you how much ram you have.

or use the 'run' on the start button, type dxdiag, and under memory, it should tell you how much ram you have.

or if you have another rig that accepts the ram, you can try to put the stick in that to check.

 

[Insane3D]

If you are installing Win2K by itself, you need to hit F6 when the setup screen first comes up. In a little bit, it will let you choose a RAID driver. You hit "S" to specify the RAID controller and it will prompt you to put in a floppy with the drivers for the RAID controller. Put in a floppy with the drivers, hit enter, and choose the correct driver. Hit enter again and it will continue loading the setup program. When setup starts it should "see" your HD on the RAID controller if you loaded the correct drivers. The KR7A-R has the Highpoint 372 ATA133 RAID controller. You can get the drivers for it here. Just unzip that to a floppy disk and pop it in when the Win2K setup asks for it. Good luck.

 

[FOH]

Thanks for all the replies!!! I can't explain it, but I booted W2K from CD/ROM, hit F6, and everything loaded just like normal. I didn't do anything different than the last hundered times I have done this (this isn't my first raid machine), but this time it worked just like it should. Who knows, anyway my formatting problems are over, so that answers one of my original questions.

As for the other two questions, I still have not come up with a good answer.

1. Why did this computer do absolutly nothing (no beep, no sound, no video) the first time I turned it on -- until I changed the hard drives from "master" to "cable select"??? (BTW I have them set to master again now, and it still works fine).

2. Why am I showing 1048MB of memory when I put in 512MB of memory??? Can I prove for sure how much memory I have (I don't know anyone else with a DDR machine for me to try it in, and the memory has heat sinks built over it so I can't see the chips to determine how much memory I have. All the utilities I have tried all say 1048MB of memory. Any ideas???

 

[NinjaGnome]

lol you forgot to press f6 to load your highpoint drivers in win2k thats why it didnt recognize. i had this problem too.

 

[CTho9305]

<< 2. Why am I showing 1048MB of memory when I put in 512MB of memory??? Can I prove for sure how much memory I have (I don't know anyone else with a DDR machine for me to try it in, and the memory has heat sinks built over it so I can't see the chips to determine how much memory I have. All the utilities I have tried all say 1048MB of memory. Any ideas??? >>


I'd imagine if it reports 1 gig, you have 1 gig. they probably saw "512" and dropped in 2 512 sticks. be happy

anyway, if you want to test for sure, search google for "memtest86", one of the BEST programs out there.

 

[Pilsnerpete]

<< Microsoft - because choices are confusing >>

That's makes me sick.

 

[Insidious]

In BIOS under "Advanced BIOS Features" disable "Quick Power On Self Test"

When you boot, it will do the long test of your RAM.

If it counts to 1G, that's what ya got (You lucky Dog!)