Disk Problems?

  • Thread starter Thread starter madrodger
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madrodger

I have a medium old (2001) Dell Dimension. My son used it for a
couple of years after I got a new system but eventually it got to the
point where it would boot up (Win 2000) and bring up a desktop but
wouldn't open folders or display files. I took this to be a disk
problem (although I'm a relative newbie) so on a lark I tried to
reformat the disk and reinstall Windows but after I did that, booting
from the re installation CD that came with the computer, it would go
thorough what looked like the entire initialization process but at the
end I would get a message saying it couldn't find a disk drive.
Thinking perhaps the disk was bad, I bought a new one (160 Gb Maxtor
ATA/100 from Costco) and tried again but got the same message. I
should mention that the floppy disk drive doesn't work either. How do
I get the system to recognize the new drive? Did I just waste my
money when the new drive was perfectly OK (although the extra capacity
is nice).

Any suggestions?

Thanks,

Rodger
 
madrodger said:
I have a medium old (2001) Dell Dimension. My son used it for a
couple of years after I got a new system but eventually it got to the
point where it would boot up (Win 2000) and bring up a desktop but
wouldn't open folders or display files. I took this to be a disk
problem (although I'm a relative newbie) so on a lark I tried to
reformat the disk and reinstall Windows but after I did that, booting
from the re installation CD that came with the computer, it would go
thorough what looked like the entire initialization process but at the
end I would get a message saying it couldn't find a disk drive.
Thinking perhaps the disk was bad, I bought a new one (160 Gb Maxtor
ATA/100 from Costco) and tried again but got the same message. I
should mention that the floppy disk drive doesn't work either. How do
I get the system to recognize the new drive? Did I just waste my
money when the new drive was perfectly OK (although the extra capacity
is nice).

Any suggestions?
Click to expand...

You might just have a bad cable, a bad connection, or have it improperly
jumpered.

Also, something to be cautious about: Your computer may not be able to
properly address hard drives larger than 137GB. Windows 2000 can, as
long as you're using SP3 or SP4, but both bits have to have that capability.

http://www.48bitlba.com/

What model of Dell Dimension do you have?
 
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