System Hardware Abnormal Error

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A friend of mine is running a Win2000 on a Celeron 366 PC using MSI-6165 mobo
and Award Modular Bios v4.51PG (BIOS ID:i440BX-W977-2A69KM4MC-00).

His current (working) HDD is 4GB and he's purchased a new Maxstor Diamond
Max 9 (7200) at 40GB capacity to replace it.

Having installed, on boot, while searching for IDE devices, he gets message
informing him of:-

System Hardware Abnormal (press F4 to continue)

Pressing F4, or for that matter any key, doesn't work. System is hung.
Have to restart, either reset or ctl+alt+del.

Re-installing 4GB HDD boots OK and s loads W2K. 40GB tested in another (AMD
2600+ running W2K) and OK.

I suspect, though not sure, that problem is probably related to BIOS and
version in use. It may not be capable of detecting large (??) capacity
devices.

I would really appreciate some feedback on my thoughts and help in trying to
resolve problem and get 40GB recognised and running

Thanks in anticipation
 
barrowhill said:
A friend of mine is running a Win2000 on a Celeron 366 PC using MSI-6165
mobo
and Award Modular Bios v4.51PG (BIOS ID:i440BX-W977-2A69KM4MC-00).

His current (working) HDD is 4GB and he's purchased a new Maxstor Diamond
Max 9 (7200) at 40GB capacity to replace it.

Having installed, on boot, while searching for IDE devices, he gets
message
informing him of:-

System Hardware Abnormal (press F4 to continue)

Pressing F4, or for that matter any key, doesn't work. System is hung.
Have to restart, either reset or ctl+alt+del.

Re-installing 4GB HDD boots OK and s loads W2K. 40GB tested in another
(AMD
2600+ running W2K) and OK.

I suspect, though not sure, that problem is probably related to BIOS and
version in use. It may not be capable of detecting large (??) capacity
devices.

I would really appreciate some feedback on my thoughts and help in trying
to
resolve problem and get 40GB recognised and running
Click to expand...

it looks like a bios limitation
look for a bios update

or a safer option: use a pci controller card
just make sure you get a card supported by win2k
 
First try the easy solutions(if you have not already tried). Check that the
IDE device types in BIOS are set to "Auto". If the 4GB is manually
configured and you connect the 40GB to the same cable, the BIOS will be
confused and then confuse us with errors.

Also check that proper master/slave settings are in place.

Abhilash Tibrewal
 
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