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Need help with an install of a hard drive

I

imported_Krypto

Senior member
Ok, so a friend brought me a computer that he wants a 40gb hard drive installed on and windows xp pro loaded. This machine is an older HP Pavilion 333mhz celeron I believe. He pulled the old hard drive and ram and installed 2x128mb of ram instead. It will post and all put it won't detect the hard drive and I believe that it's obvious that the thing doesn't have support for a that much storage, so I look for a BIOS update flash and there is one, I'm not sure if it will solve it but it's worth a shot. Go to flash it and it comes back with some memory manager error or HIMEM controller being enabled and that the flash could not proceed. I thought weird, so I pulled a bank of ram, that didn't work either. I know HIMEM is some sort of system file/controller that deals with ram distributing, but is there a way around it? Granted, I tried installing the hard drive and loading pro but it won't detect the HD either, so if there is a way around HIMEM and I can flash it I'm hoping that will work, if not I'll probably have to find the guy a smaller hard drive.

Can anyone help or have any ideas?
 
i dont know wut u are talking about
but to install a harddrive,,, place it in teh correct storage area in the case screw it in securely ...
set teh jumper accordingly. if its the only HD on its own cable . i beleive u want to either use No jumper (mainly for WD) or set it to MAster first
then make sure the IDe or sata cable is connected properly and that it has the power source in correctly
 
Heh, I know how to install a hard drive, I'm baffled as to why it will not detect it. I have it installed correctly I know that, but seeing as the older machines have a problem with bigger hard drives I was wondering if there is anyway around this like flashing the BIOS or something. If the motherboard does not detect the hard drive, then I can't format it, can partition it, I can't do anything until it detects it which is where I'm stumped.
 
The drive has a jumper setting to force 32 GB mode, which will work fine for that era BIOS.

Your flashing problem comes from using a boot floppy that has HIMEM.SYS set to load in autoexec.bat or config.sys. Either that or (yikes!) you're trying to flash from a command prompt in Windows.

Setting the drive jumper loses you 8.5 GB of space but is the safer choice, especially if you don't have the PC hooked to battery backup.
 
Originally posted by: DaveSimmons
The drive has a jumper setting to force 32 GB mode, which will work fine for that era BIOS.

Your flashing problem comes from using a boot floppy that has HIMEM.SYS set to load in autoexec.bat or config.sys. Either that or (yikes!) you're trying to flash from a command prompt in Windows.

Setting the drive jumper loses you 8.5 GB of space but is the safer choice, especially if you don't have the PC hooked to battery backup.
Click to expand...


Hmm, any idea what jumper that is? It's a maxtor diamondmax plus 8 hard drive, no this is a boot attempt at flashing the bios off of a floppy.

EDIT: Hmm, could it be the CAP LIMIT jumper on the HD?
 
Nope, look at the top of the drive, or go to maxtor.com to look for a pic or PDF of the little booklet that came with the drive.
 
Originally posted by: DaveSimmons
Nope, look at the top of the drive, or go to maxtor.com to look for a pic or PDF of the little booklet that came with the drive.
Click to expand...


Booya, thank you davesimmons. It was as easy as that, it detected the hard drive in the BIOS right away. Just for future reference, why would one want to do this? If I get windows installed and everything and pull that second jumper cap out will it go right back to not detecting it? Thanks though, I appreciate your time!

EDIT: Installation of windows is working great now. Thank you!
 
You're welcome!

The jumper exists so you don't have to do a BIOS update, or if no update exists.

To use the full 40 GB you need to either update the BIOS or buy a PCI IDE card to make this PC able to see a 40 GB drive. But if you do that and remove the jumper you'll need to delete all partitions and start over.

If the owner needs more space it's probably easier to buy a second 40 GB and cripple it too 🙂
 
Originally posted by: DaveSimmons
You're welcome!

The jumper exists so you don't have to do a BIOS update, or if no update exists.

To use the full 40 GB you need to either update the BIOS or buy a PCI IDE card to make this PC able to see a 40 GB drive. But if you do that and remove the jumper you'll need to delete all partitions and start over.

If the owner needs more space it's probably easier to buy a second 40 GB and cripple it too 🙂
Click to expand...


Ahh I see, I'll certainly keep that in mind when working with older computers, I had no idea one could cripple a hard drive, would of saved me lots of time in the past, I appreciate the tip! I'll remind the owner that he owes you a beer in the near future! 😉
 
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