Windows XP won't install on new hard drive

[wfbberzerker]

Just recently the hard drive on my mom's computer (a 40gb maxtor thats 5 or 6 years old) decided to crap out, so i bought a new seagate 80gb to replace it. she wanted some stuff put on it before she reinstalled windows, so i partitioned/formatted it using my current computer into ntfs and made a folder on the c drive with some music in it.

so today, i took it over to install windows. for one thing, when i started up the install, according to the setup, the drive was never formatted or partitioned. so i figured, what the hell, and just did it again using windows setup. it formatted and installed the windows files ok, but when i restarted it, the computer just hung when it was supposed to start loading off the hard drive. it doesn't freeze, because i can just ctrl-alt-del to restart the computer, and if the windows cd is in, the prompt to load that comes up first. i know i didn't set it to load off the wrong hard drive in the bios, because if i set any others, i just get the "non system disk" error.

i've tried redoing the windows setup, trying both quick and regular formats, but to no avail. any ideas as to what i should do? or is the hard drive borked and should i rma it?

EDIT: i forgot, here's her system.

 

[DaveSimmons]

You might put it back in your own PC and make sure that other C: isn't there too.

The first partition on the HD needs to be a primary partition and marked as active.

It's possible you either created a logical partition or a non-active primary partiton, then XP created a second partition after that. After the first reboot the BIOS finds the first partition instead of the second one with XP.

 

[wfbberzerker]

well, after the first time, when it didn't detect a partition to begin with and installed, and i ran setup again, it did find the partition that it had just created, and i deleted that partition and remade it.

i hope you understood that run-on sentence.

 

[DaveSimmons]

Another possibility is the BIOS doesn't recognize the drive properly, does it show as 73-75 GB in the BIOS or POST, or something whacky like 6 GB?

And I'm still wondering if there isn't leftovers from your initial formatting on the drive.

Do you have a drive utility floppy from the HD manufacturer?

 

[wfbberzerker]

Originally posted by: DaveSimmons
Another possibility is the BIOS doesn't recognize the drive properly, does it show as 73-75 GB in the BIOS or POST, or something whacky like 6 GB?

And I'm still wondering if there isn't leftovers from your initial formatting on the drive.

Do you have a drive utility floppy from the HD manufacturer?

no, its showing the correct amount in the bios. the thing is, the first time i formatted and installed, it seemed to go alright, it was just when it restarted for the first time to load the gui based windows setup that the problem began.

and no, i bought the hard drive as oem, so theres no floppy with it.

 

[Shaftatplanetquake]

It sounds to me like the BIOS is not finding a boot record to use, other than from the cdrom drive. Check to make sure that the system BIOS has the appropriate settings specified to insure that the machine will try to boot from the hard disk drive near the top of the boot order.

 

[Shaftatplanetquake]

I've seen BIOSes that were broken and would not initiate the boot correctly as per the boot order settings. I've had to flip and the settings around during the windows installation routine to get it to boot specifically to the hard drive after doing the initial portion that needs to boot from CD. You might need to set the hard drive as the ONLY boot device (and be sure "boot other devices" is set to no) after you get done with the CD booting portion.

 

[myocardia]

Your problem is most likely that you need to divide the disk into two 40 GB partitions, instead of one 80 GB partition. That motherboard is from the era when everyone who was buying a new (large) hard drive was having the same type of problems.

 

[tjmjr]

Try installing the DDO (dynamic drive overlay) software. It is on the cd enclosed with the drive. That should solve your problem.

 

[wfbberzerker]

Shaftatplanetquake- i'm fairly certain the bios isn't at fault, because if i choose any other first boot option aside from hdd-0 (which is where the hard drive should be), it gives me the default "master boot record not found blah blah" message that it should. also, if i set hdd-0 as the only boot option, it still hangs, just without the cd-rom boot message.

myocardia- i tried using two 40gb partitions (around 38.5gb each, actually), and it still did not work. interestingly, when i brought the hard drive back to my computer and plugged it in, when i went into disk management, it showed that there were no partitions on the hard drive. do you think it's a hard drive problem or a problem with the xp disk maybe?

tjmjr- there is no cd that came with the hard drive, as it was oem. but, how would i be able to install it if the hard drive thats giving me the trouble is the only drive and i cant get into windows to install the software, let alone install it to a drive with no paritions?

 

[wfbberzerker]

bump

 

[Nolonemo]

I would download the Seagate install utility, make your bootable floppy or CD and use that to install the drive. http://www.seagate.com/support/disc/drivers/discwiz.html