Harddrive Help

I recently cleared my hard drive with the intention of installing a new system , previously i had two hard drives , an 80 gb for my system an older drive for storage , while trying to run windows it installed fragments on both drives . I removed the smaller and tried to install windows only on my largest . on reboot , my pc says " error loading operating system " i tried converting my hard drive from lba or normal , to large , but on reboot my computer froze at my hardware listings , please help!

 

Not sure what condition the drives are in now, but just disconnect the drive you don't want to use for now and install XP to the other. That will eliminate any problems with choosing drives and possible problems about getting the installer to use C: as the XP drive.

Reboot to the XP CD and remove all the partitions when the option comes up.

Reset your BIOS to default and don't change any settings.

 

i have only one drive connected now , but i will try defaulting my settings , thanks

 

what do you suggest i set my hard drive as when auto detecting hdd .. LBA , normal , or large

 

Probably LBA, but Auto is all right.

 

It's possible that there is still a boot sector on the other drive that is mesing things up. After you get XP installed, you should be able to reconnect the other drive, boot into XP, and then right-click Computer, Manage, Disk Management to remove all the partitions from that second drive and create new ones with an NTFS format.

If you have any problems booting after XP is installed and you have that second drive hooked up, we can use bootable CD's or a floppy to clear that second drive.

 

Alright , I re-installed from the boot disk again , defualted my settings , and still after the next reboot after veryifying data , i get the " error operating system

 

Are you saying that you get this error after booting from the XP CD, starting setup, and then this happens on the first reboot? When you say "boot disk", do you mean the XP CD?

Check your BIOS to see if there is a place to specify the boot device. And look at the boot order, too.

No floppies in the drive, I hope .

 

my boot sequence is set to run my cd first becuase my installation isnt complete , it only rebooted once , then my hard drive , just doesnt wanna seem to run windows

 

It should boot from the CD to start setup and then it should boot from the hard drive the first time it reboots after loading files.

If it boots from the CD the second time, it just restarts setup.

So, set the CD first and run setup. When it reboots the first time, stop it at BIOS, if necessary, and change it to boot from the HD the second time.

Did you see any place in BIOS to specify the boot device?

What was on that drive before? Was it working all right?

Do you get far enough to partition and format?

 

You might want to switch drives just to see if the other will install OK. If it does, there may be something wrong with the 80. Try testing it.

Double-check the jumper on the 80. Sometimes there is a different setting if there is no slave.

Look for bent pins, and be sure both ends of the cable are connected. Is it master/slave or cable-select?

Free Hard Drive Testing Applications:
HD Tune
HDAT2 (Diagnostics and bad sector recovery)
MHDD Low-level Diagnostics
Bootable Hitachi Drive Fitness Test Floppy or CD Image (works on most drives)

Hard Drive Manufacturers' Diagnostic Utilities Links:
TachTech
BleepingComputer

 

yes ive tried defualting my boot sequence , made no difference . not the boot device , theres only an option for boot sequence and booting from a local area network

 

Better try the other things. Sounds like a bad drive.