Argh! Can't get started!

I'm in the first stages of setting up the software on my new machine. I've done the automatic and quick BIOS settings, and that should be fine.

So I'm trying to install Win2K on a brand new hard drive, and it keeps reporting the disk size of my 80GB as no more than 8GB. I look in the BIOS and it also gets reported there as an 8GB disk. This was a limit at some point, was it not? Well how do I change it? Windows won't install on even that 8 GB partition, and I don't know what to do!

Also, I'm a bit worried, my bootup sequence reports that my processor is an Athlon 1500+ when it is supposed to be a 2100+. Should I be worried?

update the BIOS on you motherboard
8 gig was a ceiling at some point

as for the 1500+ V 2100+ it sound like the FSB is running at 100mhz FSB rather then 133mhz

How do I update the BIOS? Besides, the motherboard is brand new! Shouldn't it support it already??

ther we limits at 2gig, 8.4 gig and another some where around 32/36 gigs and again at ~127gigs

it is possible that you drive is jumpered to be "8.4 gig comaptible"

the latest BIOS can be found at the motherboard makers site
make a boot floppy - nothing fancy, a basic DOS one will do.
and then follow the makers instructions

Man, and now I'm stuck at some point where it just says "Verifying DMI Pool Data" and it won't go past that. ARGH!

can you boot from a floppy?

You need to go in and reset all your bios settings to default.

Sean

Okay, the FSB was set at 100 instead of 133. For some reason my BIOS considers "Optimized Defaults" as incorrect values. Whatever. I'll put them back for now if you think that will help, but won't this hurt me in the long run?

I'm still creating disks for flashing the BIOS. I still don't understand why I have to do this, considering the board is brand new and it shouldn't have this problem, right? The new BIOS revisions on SOYO's site don't even mention a fix for this. Are you sure it's not something else?

If it is new, you should have gotten a manual with it that tells what size drive it will support and also what settings the jumpers should be for the processor. If that speed isn't listed in the manual then there some be some information at the website that will tell you how to do it. Or if it even supports it. And if you can't get into the BIOS now you will need to reset the board, there is a jumper on the motherboard for that and it will set it at default, or at least it should.

The board manual says that it doesn't have jumpers for the processor, that everything is done in the BIOS setup utility. It does have the reset jumper, though, but can't I just reset to defaults in the BIOS setup? I can still get into there.

Oh, and I was able to boot to floppy.

I made a boot disk. I made a disk of the flash and BIOS stuff from the SOYO website. I flashed the BIOS. It still limits the drive to 8gigs. And the only thing I can do to set the drive size is in the CMOS setup there's an autodetect function. That's the only thing I can do.

I'll say it again: ARGH!

So yeah, I can boot to a floppy at least.

okay that good

now tell us about your hard drive, make, model number etc

do you have instanc messanger?

It's a brand new hard drive. Western Digital Caviar 80GB Special Edition. Should be an excellent drive.

I've got IM. I'm logged on under this screen name.

my screen name is dignan17, not dignan sorry about that

no luck with dignan17 or dignan

anywaay back to your HDD
look at the jumpers on you HDD and tell me what you see

this generic WD document should help
http://support.wdc.com/techinfo/general/jumpers.asp

Yeah, those settings are on the drive it's self. I understand how those work, but none of the setting seem to work. I started with that drive (the 80GB) as the master w/slave and my 100GB drive as the slave. All those jumper settings were correct, and when I went to install Win2K, it asked which of the 8GB drives I wanted to install on. Argh again!

Are you using AOL Instant Messenger? I have a feeling you might be using MSN.

yeah MSN

so you booted up W2K with the four floppy disks and when it comes to asking which drive you want to put it on it just sees two 8 gig partitions?
did it not give you the option of creating a partition & what file system you should use ? FAT32 / NTFS

four floppy disks? no, I was able to boot from the CDROM w/ the Win2K install CD. The it only saw 2 8GB partitions that represented the two drives. I couldn't tell which was which as a result, so I shut down, disconnected the slave 100GB, and went through it again. This time there was one 8GB partition. I tried to create a new partition, but it wouldn't let me create anything over about 7MB because that's all it thought it had left.

grrrr. stupid computers...

booting from CD is the same as the four floppies......
have you tried having it deleting the 8gig partition on the new drive and then creating a new one?

if so what size does it let you go to?
i know you can have 2k on a greater then 8gig partition, but maybe it has to be streched afterwards....need more coffee

Nope, tried that too. It wouldn't let me go about 8GB or ~7800MB

I was under the assumption that the problem was with the BIOS, but I don't know...

I don't know if this helps, but the system won't boot up with my old hard drive attached, and that already has Win2K installed and everything.

sound like it is time to use EZ-Install
It is part of WD Data Lifeguard Tools. What it does, I gather, is put a little something in the MBR on the HDD to tell the BIOS - not too sure.

Given that you motherboard is only seeing 8gig of either drive does make it/ its bios the likely source of the problem.

Yeah, that's probably it. Also, a minor correction. It wasn't showing an 8GB partition on the brand new drive, it was showing 8GB of "unpartitioned space" from which I could only make one 8GB partition.
That doesnt' change the situation, but it's more accurate

I'll try that tool.

Hmmm... perhaps for some strange reason your drive has already been partitioned? I'd create a basic boot disk with fidsk on it, and boot with that and delete all the partitions that are on it... Then create the one massive partition that you want... (Well, you should seperate the system and data sections, but that's up to you) Fdisk can be a bit intimidating if you've never used it before, so you've been warned... Windows installer partition table stuff is always a bit dumbed down so it's easier but doesn't make things clear.

Matthew

No, the disk has not been partitioned. Plus, when I boot to floppy, it can't find the c: drive.

I tried the WD EZ-Install. It didn't work because it said there weren't any Western Digital drives attached. I think the problem might be that it's an OEM disk and I'm not sure what's been done to it. In the BIOS it is recognized, but as "VWD VD800JB..." it should be WD800JB, without the V. I don't know if that has anything to do with the installer not recognizing it or what, but it didn't work regardless.

I've had problems before with WD's EZ-Install and all I did was switch to Maxtor's MaxBlast Plus and that program was actually a lot better and had no problems with my Western Digital drive. I'm going to try it again here.

Thanks for the advice!

Okay, it's obvious to me that the problem is not with the hard drive but something else. I used MaxBlast, it recognized the drive, I chose to partition it and what was the only option they gave me? 8GB

AHHHHH!!!

So I'm all out of ideas. I'm not too happy with this whole process at the moment. It has to be the BIOS, but I see no way of changing it's thinking that the the largest drive size is 8GB! ARGH! ARGH! ARGH!

You can't find the C drive 'cause it isn't partitioned/formated... Fdisk will still be able to see it... I would doubt it'd the bios, because no one has an athlon with an 8GB drive attached... Do you have another computer you can put this drive in maybe and see what happens there?

Matthew

No no, I didn't say it was the BIOS that was the reason for not recognizing the drive, it's the reason for only allowing an 8GB drive. I've now used 3 different utilities for partitioning/formating my drive, and they've all seen the drive, but they all tell me they can't make a partition bigger than 8GB. THAT is what I'm saying is caused by the BIOS.

Have you tried fdisk yet? I don't think the BIOS would limit that to what it sees. If it does then maybe there is something wrong with the drive. Give it a try on another computer, just to hook it up and see what size it thinks it is. Also don't jumper the drive to cable select, make it either the master or slave.

I used fdisk. All that seems to do is create a partition. It didn't do anything alse. It seemed to have nothing to do with whether or not drive sizes of greater than 8GB are supported.

So yes, I've run that, then I went into the Win2K setup utility and when it came time to chose which partition to install on, again it only showed one 8GB partition.

The thing that makes me believe that the problem is not with the drive is that I've used 3 different formatting utilities on this drive that all reported the size the same way. Also, I've hooked up 2 other drives, one with an operating system already installed, and the other only used for files, and they were both only seen as having 8GB each, despite the fact they were 25 and 100GB drives.

At this point, I must appologize for this thread, because it is completely irrelevant. When I ordered this new machine, I had bought some nice rounded silver cables that would look nice in my windowed case. It appears they have been causing ALL OF THIS. I thought "hmmm, I'll try using the cables the mobo came with and see if that works". I fire up the machine, go into the BIOS, and what do you know? Not only is the name of the device correct now, but it is being reported as 80gigs. What do you think is wrong with the cable? Why would it even effect the name of the device?? That's kinda wierd.

So this still sucks a little, because I now have to have these big, ugly, flat cables in my lovely new case, but it's much better that the thing works.

Also, I got the same cable for my CD drives. do you think those could get screwed up by this too?

I've built several video servers recently, someone else had ordered the parts and had ordered some rounded IDE cables (I suppose in an effort to make the bits move faster!). In every case, I ended up using the flat IDE cables that came free with the RAID card. I found that the some of the individual conductors were starting to work their way loose.
I wouldn't get too pissed off, it's not worth it

LOL

I know newer drives use 80 conductor ribbon cables, but I thought this was to do with DMA or UDMA
i can't see how this would effect the 8gig V 80gig problem you were having
you should be able to get some fancy round 80 conductor IDE cables
as for using these on your CD drives.....should be fine, but then I would never have guessed them causing an issue with the HDD

You may also want to try fdisk /mbr. that'll completely remove the master boot record from the drive. No matter what's on it. It won't appear to do anything, just goves you the prompt back, but it DOES erase the MBR.

In the Bios, don't let it auto detect the drive type. TELL it that the drive is a particular size. you MUST have it in the correct MODE too, most prbably in LBA mode.
The BIOS is probably giving the CHS setting in normal mode. THIS WILL NOT WORK. even in AUTO, tell it that you want to use LBA.

It really is working fine now. Just changing out the cables seems to have fixed it. It was immediately recognized correctly without a need to do anything. The rounded cable that it was connected to seems to be damaged anyway. It seems to have been bent rather extremely at some point, and I don't know how the wires inside did.