new hardrive issues with win2k

[Guest_imported]

All,
I've been experiencing more than my fair share of problems with my brand new 20.4 gig ide maxtor hardrive and windows 2000 professional. Windows 98 can install fine, however 2k refuses to work. There are a couple of issues going on. First of all my BIOS is picking up a different number for the cylinders than whats on the hardrive itself. After a little investigating at maxtor's site the number it's picking up is the "Actual number of cylinders" or something. When I try setting it manually and install win 2k (fresh clean install or upgrading from 98, it doesnt matter) I get an "INACCESSABLE_BOOT_DEVICE" error. When I use the settings the BIOS automatically detects, and run the setup/install (again from upgrading from 98 or fresh install from floppies, ive tried both) I get the error "STOP: C0000221 Unknown Hard Error \SystemRoot\System32\ntdll.dll" which as you know, is not a nice error to be getting. I've tried all sorts of different methods of installing, even from a 2nd cd of windows 2000 professional, and still no go. It's just so odd that windows 98 works fine without a hitch, and 2k is putting up such a fight. Any help or suggestions would be much appreciated. Thanks.

adam@vbnet.net

 

[ShaithisDanoveur]

Might want to check your motherboard bios - make sure it's updated to be current. If the drive and bios aren't agreeing, that's the first place to go.

Also, though this sounds weird - if you have another IDE cable try using it. I've seen faulty drive cables cause this problem too.

As a last resort, put that drive in a different machine and see what happens there.

 

[Guest_imported]

I've checked the bios, its the newest available (aug 2000). I'll try replacing the ide cable, but I dunno what that'll do... 98 works on it fine so the drive works, don't know what else would be doing it.

adam@vbnet.net

 

[DeanSpencer]

Only other thing I can think of is RAM. I have seen systems work find on 98 only to have ram problems when 2000pro is installed. I think it is because of how 2000 uses ram better than 98 does.

 

[quackers]

I had this error on my win 2k and could install win 9* and linux nut got the same error whith 2k and a similar error with nt It was a memory problem try One new stick of memory and restore the bios defaults and set harddrive to auto detect. I replaced hard drive etc etc etc when I had this error and it turned out to be memory

 

[bearbear1982]

i have a same problem posted by disciple. I bought a new 40gb maxtor hd, n try to install win2k on it. I got both inaccesible device errors and also the unknown hardware errors.
I cant figure out wat can the problem be, need some advice and help.

thanks in advance