Guest_imported
New member
- Jan 1, 1970
- 0
OK... this is a long one, but it's only long b/c I want to be very clear about the problem I have and what I have tried to fix it.
It starts off when I installed an old zip drive on my computer (which was running on Win2K, and was built by a fried 3 years ago.) The zip drive was put on the same IDE cable and power cable as my hard drive. I installed the drivers and the zip drive (which was pretty old) and waited awhile before I restarted b/c there were other things I needed to do before I restarted. Once I did restart, the computer would not load Windows... the blue screen of death would appear while Windows was half loaded. The screen said "inaccessible boot drive." After exporing several possibilities of things that may have caused the problem, the only conclusion was that the hard drive was done for. Windows boot disks did nothing. So I bought a new hard drive.
On installing the new hard drive, I ran into more problems; Window's setup CD's didn't work, windows boot disks didn't work, DOS boot disks didn't work, and the hard drive software boot floppy didn't work. My computer wouldn't go past the startup screen. The BIOS on my computer won't recognise the hard drive at all. The jumper is set correctly. All cables are secure to all places, and inserted correctly. The boot sequence is correct. I believe all options have been explored.... do you have any other ideas of things I should try? What are all of the possibilities as to what could be wrong? How can I see which of these is the problem? The computer is somewhat old (a little over 3 years) and the new hard drive is 40G. I've been told that I might need to refresh the BIOS, but I can't since I don't know the mobo brand or anything... and I would think that the computer would still run the windows boot floppy or setup CD, whether BIOS recognised the hard drive or not. Here's another little oddity (one that might be unrelated)... when I start up the computer, sometimes the memory check only sees half of my RAM. Thanks for the help!
It starts off when I installed an old zip drive on my computer (which was running on Win2K, and was built by a fried 3 years ago.) The zip drive was put on the same IDE cable and power cable as my hard drive. I installed the drivers and the zip drive (which was pretty old) and waited awhile before I restarted b/c there were other things I needed to do before I restarted. Once I did restart, the computer would not load Windows... the blue screen of death would appear while Windows was half loaded. The screen said "inaccessible boot drive." After exporing several possibilities of things that may have caused the problem, the only conclusion was that the hard drive was done for. Windows boot disks did nothing. So I bought a new hard drive.
On installing the new hard drive, I ran into more problems; Window's setup CD's didn't work, windows boot disks didn't work, DOS boot disks didn't work, and the hard drive software boot floppy didn't work. My computer wouldn't go past the startup screen. The BIOS on my computer won't recognise the hard drive at all. The jumper is set correctly. All cables are secure to all places, and inserted correctly. The boot sequence is correct. I believe all options have been explored.... do you have any other ideas of things I should try? What are all of the possibilities as to what could be wrong? How can I see which of these is the problem? The computer is somewhat old (a little over 3 years) and the new hard drive is 40G. I've been told that I might need to refresh the BIOS, but I can't since I don't know the mobo brand or anything... and I would think that the computer would still run the windows boot floppy or setup CD, whether BIOS recognised the hard drive or not. Here's another little oddity (one that might be unrelated)... when I start up the computer, sometimes the memory check only sees half of my RAM. Thanks for the help!
