Hey, tried to build a pc with my friend today and it didn't seem to go very well.

This is my spec.

http://i1.tinypic.com/miht8m.jpg + the addictional 92mm cpu cooling fan.

We put it all in despite some problems, and it seemed to boot up fine. On the setup screen it detected the ram, cpu etc but possibly not the SATA HD. Anyway, the HD is 250gig. After fitting all the parts we tried to install windows, it said the partitition was only 136 mb big but we installed windows anyway.

Then we realised that when pressing the reset button it never goes back into windows. Ie. you have to turn the pc off for a minute or two and reboot to get it to work. In windows, the c: is 136mb.

My friend then tried to install the drivers for the HD off the floppy. We did that, and then tried to reinstall windows but it keeps saying

"Examining files 0 of 254030mb or whatever on bus 1 and something or other 0"

it doesn't move from that screen, he says since alt control and delete doesn't work it has crashed.

i can load windows, but only when turning the pc off, and then once in windows it only shows up 136mb.

Can you plz help us ? As for one it won't load windows and two the hard drive seems to be playing up. we tried to run a scandisk on the hd but it said error failure and went to that blue screen. but after the second boot it said SNDSK complete.

Any clues... we might of bent the pins in the back of the HD slightly but it seems to fit the connector ok

Please help as my only other answer is to take it to a pc shop tomorrow, and they'll no doubt charge me money i can't afford :P

He seems to think either

a) we ****ed the pins up at the back
b) by installing windows without the sata drivers, that's ****ed the hd.

help

hmm

Did you FDISK the drive and set it to NTFS filesystem?

How did u bend the pins at the back??? - never mind... can you un-bend them?

We put it all in despite some problems, and it seemed to boot up fine. On the setup screen it detected the ram, cpu etc but possibly not the SATA HD. Anyway, the HD is 250gig. After fitting all the parts we tried to install windows, it said the partitition was only 136 mb big but we installed windows anyway.

Then we realised that when pressing the reset button it never goes back into windows. Ie. you have to turn the pc off for a minute or two and reboot to get it to work. In windows, the c: is 136mb.

I'm guessing here but have you tried to install WinXP pre-service pack 1 or some other OS. I'd further guess you've got your OS from off the back of a CD writer rather than original which won't help you.

Quick way to deal with this would be to go buy yourself a legit copy of WinXp (home or Professional) with SP2 on it already... That will provide you with the relevant support for your hard drive and save you hours of screwing around and removing your hair follicles the hard way.


The bent pins issue is something you can recover from so long as you don't get frustrated and break things.

Yep appearently it's a service pack issue grrr, i have xp already tho. legal ofc. but non svrpk 2

The issue is 48-bit LBA support - Windows XP didn't support it before SP1, giving a maximum size of 137 GB. Can't you just tell it during the installation to format the partition less than this size, then resize the partition (or just add more) after getting up to date on service packs?

If you're feeling adventurous, you could always try slipstreaming SP2 into your XP cd :)

More realistic solution: is it legal to use someone else's XP cd that has SP2 on it, if he uses his own serial? Since you already own it I'd be tempted to do this anyway, without losing too much sleep over it!

More realistic solution: is it legal to use someone else's XP cd that has SP2 on it, if he uses his own serial? Since you already own it I'd be tempted to do this anyway, without losing too much sleep over it!

I'd be tempted to get XP with SP2 "illegally" ie download or borrow and install with that CD and just use your key... technically it's illegal, but I believe the license agreement is actually your license key NOT the media...

More realistic solution: is it legal to use someone else's XP cd that has SP2 on it, if he uses his own serial? Since you already own it I'd be tempted to do this anyway, without losing too much sleep over it!
Only one problem with that... the serial for SP1 cd won't work for SP2.

I can't remember for the life of me whether it will see the full drive later on but either way the smart money is probably to create a partition of less that 130Gb to install to and then go from there. Hopefully it'll recognise the rest when you get the update and can use the drive in full.

create a slipstreamed sp2 install CD with your key? tis what ive done.

how does one do that?