Strange Hard Drive Problem

[Xponential]

I'm installing a Samsung HM160HC 160GB PATA hard drive into a buddy's Dell XPS m140 laptop. However, I can't get it to boot once Win XP SP3 is installed. The correct size of the drive (160GB) shows up in the BIOS. After formatting with NTFS, XP installs without any problems. However, after it copies the necessary files over to the drive and reboots, it can't find a bootable disk, it just hangs.

Now I know there's nothing wrong with the XP CD because I've used it on multiple installs before without any problems. At first I thought it might be that 137GB limitation on this older hardware (because of the 28-bit LBA addressing), but I've seen multiple people post online that this drive worked fine with there XPS m140. I've tried creating a 30GB partition for the install, and leaving the rest in a separate partition just to be safe, but that didn't work either. I've tried all different size partitions, but none of them worked. I don't think there's anything wrong with the drive because it formatted and installed windows without any hiccups.

Any help would be greatly appreciated, thanks!

 

[T_Yamamoto]

XP CD+Multiple usage=😵

 

[Charlie98]

I swapped my old Dell's 40GB PATA HHD for a new WD 160GB drive, installed XP (SP1) off the Dell disk and haven't looked back. I allowed the system to format the new HHD so I don't know how it configured the partitions, but it all works.

Maybe format and install it on another computer, first? Or are you missing a driver, maybe?

 

[sm625]

XP CD+Multiple usage=😵

Regardless of whether XP is legitimate or not, it should still install. I have installed XP over 20 times from one CD. Most of the time I am just testing so I only need the install to live a few hours or days so I dont care if it wont activate.

 

[Haunty]

Try erasing the drive with Active Killdisk and try again.

 

[sm625]

Are you serious Haunty? I'm sure the OP has solved the problem by now, since its been 8 months.:\

 

[VirtualLarry]

I think that you need XP SP1 to support > 128GB HDs.

 

[DaveSimmons]

.... and a time machine if you want to help the OP 🙂