hard drive problem, i am so confused

[butch81385]

ok, so my friend bought a hard drive and asked me to install it. simple enough. i take out the old (up for sale in my post) and plop in the new maxtor 40 gig. use maxtors cd to set it up (which i later found to be a big mistake) and it wouldnt load win 98. the cd just kept beeping and displaying giberish. i then got rid of everything (as much as i could) and ran FDISK. i created a primary partition as i was told to do from a website tutorial. i restarted as it asked me to do. and now, when trying to boot from the disk to format c:, all i get is a _ in the top left corner. if i try to boot from the maxtor cd it freezes, and if i try to boot from the win 98 se cd it still does the beep and giberish thing.

so my questions:
how can i get the hdd back to factory clean and partition it, format it, and install win 98se on it? (apparently it can only take an 8.5 gig hard drive, can i just make multiple 8.5 gig partitions? or can i update the bios? if so, how? i will get the bios and version if needed, but am too lazy to run downstairs right now)

What a nice day this has been....

[Jeordiewhite]

Download this: http://www.maxtor.com/en/support/downloads/powermax.htm

Then try running the low level format on full option.

[Dax_Brandy]

maybe the MBR is corrupted. there are some programs like ranish partition manager that let's you repair the mbr and the partition. boot from a floppy drive and use Ranish partition manager.

[Jeordiewhite]

Without using extra software, you can type fdisk /mbr if you need to fix it.

[butch81385]

i will check those out

jeordiewhite, i cant type fdisk because there is no where to type fdisk, booting off of the disk freezes with the _ in the corner, bootting off of the cd freezes in the menu, and booting off of the hard drive asks to put in the OS cd or disk, but wont work if i put them in....

[Jeordiewhite]

Have you tried a windows 98 SE boot disk?
If you don't have access to windows 98SE, like i don't since i haven't used it in awhile and don't plan on going back to it, use this: http://www.bootdisk.com/

Hope that helps, also maybe your boot disk or his lens is dirty?

[butch81385]

well, i tried the powermax thing. it comes up and says we are not responsible for when you break your computer (or something like that) press f8 to run the program, so i hit f8, then it says "we are really, really, not responsible, hit f8" so i hit f8 again, and a screen pops up that is split in 2 sections then it goes straight back to A:\

right now i am so fed up and under the weather, that im gonna play some CoD to let out aggression then im going to bed. i will try the reg 98se boot disk in the morning.... thanks for your help so far

[butch81385]

ok, tried the 98 bootdisk and got the same result as my fdisk disk... flashing underscore and a clicking noise... and the whole thing freezes....

open to any other suggestions...

[Tazzin]

I would put the new drive in another computer as a slave.. FDISK the drive. and then partition it however you want. Test out your Win98SE CD on your current computer to be sure it boots into the 98SE setup. Install the drive back into the other system. Boot using your 98SE CDROM (be sure to change the BIOS to boot from the CDROM drive - if the mobo supports it) and install 98se.

[Dj-Icer]

Very recently, my hdd has a problem. It can't be detected (or as NONE at BIOS) and there was a little detection which takes it a little while, and then it turned out NONE again. What's wrong with it?

Can I do Reinstallation Win XP, without having my C: data completely deleted? There has a been a little problem with my blue screen saying that my "kernel..bla bla.." has a problem. Then my computer automatically restart and during BIOS check, my HDD wasn't found or as NONE.