HD problem stumping everyone

[roadkilll]

Here is the background:
Hitachi Deskstar SATA 250gig hard drive on a Asus A8n-E (SATA) Mobo

Brand new pc that I built so I have no problem with wiping out everything. I made the mistake of buying my OS off of EBAY.

Bought Windows XP Pro w/ SP2 and tried to install it. It wa srealy sketchy, there were many dll file that sys files that could not copy, but I installed it any thinking that I could recover the file from the web (stupid me). When I tried to run windows update, the validation of the CD key failed. That was enough for me. I got a refund for the OS and purchased a legal cd key and burned a copy of Windows XP Pro from my work. The Cd from work only had SP1 on it but I was able to download SP2. The instalation and validation went fine.

However I just noticed that it was only show 127g on my 250g drive. Did some research and found that there might be a problem with XP seeing such large drives, no biggie.

So I went home last night and tried to partition the disk:

I set my BIOS back to default settings, it is set up to automatically dectect my hard drive. It see it as a 250g hard drive.

I set it to Boot from CD. I am using the CD with SP1 on it as that is all I have. It starts the set up and then gets to the blue screen entitled "Windows XP professional setup". This is the screen where it asks you if you want to partition the drive. here is what it shows:

Unknown Disk
(There is no disk in this drive)
Unknown Disk
(There is no disk in this drive)
131070 MB Disk 0 at ID 0 on Bus 0 on atapi [MBR]

I tried to partition it but as you can see it only sees 131070 MB. I don't under stand why it shows "Unknown Disk" twice. I am guessing that the first "Unknown disk" is where the other half of the hard drive is but I cannot get the PC to see it.

I tried the repair option and it brought me to the C: promt. I Fromat C: and Format D:. Both went to 100% and I still could only see 131070 MB.

Keeping in mind that the first disk (piriated) that I used to load XP onto my PC had a lot of files missing and had SP2, would that be the reason that my boot disk contaiing only SP1 cannot see it to format it?

Is there a chance that the first disk could have corrupted half of the hard drive?

 

[firewolfrl]

use the Hitachi drive utility to zero out the drive...I have not used it in a while so I don't know what they call it now.
I prefer the Powermax utility from Maxtor (though there is a disclaimer that it does not work with embedded SATA controllers)

this will clean the boot sector of the drive and give you a fresh start.
for your motherboard you should have got the drivers (floppy disk?)to load with the F6 settings as you boot in the beginning as soon as you see the blue screen...you need to treat the SATA drive as a SCSI drive so all the drivers are loaded.
good luck

 

[wolluf]

would agree with firewolfrl about using the SATA drivers which should be on the mobo's install CD (or their website otherwise).

SP1 should be ok with larger drives - but you can create a SP2 disk by slipstreaming (to see if that works any better) - eg

http://www.helpwithwindows.com/WindowsXP/winxp-sp2-bootcd.html

 

[cdogg]

Yeah, I agree with the above. It does seem like the correct SATA driver isn't being loaded. Definitely use the utility that came with the hard drive to delete any existing partitions. While you're there, you might as well use it to set up the partitions the way you want them instead of waiting for the Windows Installation prompt to do it for you.

~cdogg
"Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results." - Albert Einstein
[tab][navy]For general rules and guidelines to get better answers, click here:[/navy] faq219-2884

 

[kiddpete]

I ran into this with a Promise Ultra controller. Windows sp1 and sp2 have an old driver for the controller which cannot go above something like 131megs. Installing a later version of the driver cleared up the problem.

This was tough to figure out because Windows was old enough that it had a bug in the routine which loads updated drivers during the install. Hence, I had trouble getting the updated driver loaded. Oh yes, Windows also kept refusing to update because its old driver had a later (MS assigned) version number than the updated version of the software from the vendor.

 

[kiddpete]

Sorry, I meant to say 131gigs, not megs.