incorrect hard drive size

  • Thread starter Thread starter Femke
  • Start date Start date
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Femke

Two years ago a restore disc of someone else's computer was used on mine.
Apparantly this was a fatal error since now my computer thinks its harddrive
is 20 gigs instead of 8. I can't scan it ( I've tried this with several
programs), and I can't defrag. It simply errors out. It is now basically
acting like a flat planet: files tend to drop off when they come to the end.
Apart from this, I have to scrub it every few months because it starts
acting weird. This might be as a result of my not being able to defrag. I
have tried scrubbing it several times with a 'clean' installation disc but
to no avail. It always picks up the incorrect harddrive size through BIOS or
something like that.
Could someone please tell me how to deal with this problem? I am sure that
if I would understand what lies beneath windows a bit better I could fix it,
but I find it hard
to get good information on this peticular issue.
Any and every suggestion is more than welcome.
 
Two years ago a restore disc of someone else's computer was used on mine.
Apparantly this was a fatal error since now my computer thinks its harddrive
is 20 gigs instead of 8. I can't scan it ( I've tried this with several
programs), and I can't defrag. It simply errors out. It is now basically
acting like a flat planet: files tend to drop off when they come to the end.
Apart from this, I have to scrub it every few months because it starts
acting weird. This might be as a result of my not being able to defrag. I
have tried scrubbing it several times with a 'clean' installation disc but
to no avail. It always picks up the incorrect harddrive size through BIOS or
something like that.
Could someone please tell me how to deal with this problem? I am sure that
if I would understand what lies beneath windows a bit better I could fix it,
but I find it hard
to get good information on this peticular issue.
Any and every suggestion is more than welcome.
Click to expand...
The BIOS wouldn't report an incorrect drive size unless there's a fault
or the BIOS needs updating to see the correct size.

Lets get one thing cleared up first. Unless you have a working means of
transferring files to another drive, CDR or such you can pretty much
kiss anything on it goodbye.

You're at the point where you need to get hold of a Windows 2000/XP
installation CDROM. Boot using that, delete any partitions it finds
then create a new one and install the OS.
 
Two years ago a restore disc of someone else's computer was used on
mine.
Click to expand...

And it rewrote the basic drive info. Bad.
Could someone please tell me how to deal with this problem? I am sure
that if I would understand what lies beneath windows a bit better I
could fix it, but I find it hard to get good information on this
peticular issue. Any and every suggestion is more than welcome.
Click to expand...

Forget Windows, this is a more basic problem. The actual drive table is
corrupted and you need to do a low level format. Go to the manufactures
website and download the utils you need to do this. One other temp way
around this would be to manually configure the drive in the bios with the
proper CHS numbers, but that's really doen't fix the drives table. Do it
right.
 
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