XP install goes black after hardware inspection

  • Thread starter Thread starter jimkunz
  • Start date Start date
J

jimkunz

Hello all. I was only able to find one topic on this issue on the
newsgroups.. and I'm kind of hoping to find a solution rather than the
workaround of just replacing the drive.

As the subject states, XP SP2 install CD goes black and hangs right
before setup begins - after the initial quick hardware scan. Another
thread narrowed this down to some kind of partition hard drive error,
and they are correct. I put in a different hard drive and the install
began fine - but I need it to work on the other hard drive.

My question.. with no floppy drive on the computer, how can I 100%
reset a hard drive back to square one? The drive works fine in other
computers as long as it's not the main drive. I deleted the only
partition from inside XP's admin tools on a second computer, created a
new partition using the full 120GB and formatted the drive NTFS - no
luck - XP install still hangs in the same place. So I figure there
must be something one step up above what I tried - I just don't know
what that is. Can anyone please help me to completely wipe this drive
and start fresh? Most apps I've seen mentioned say to boot off a
floppy to run them, but that's not an option for me.

Thanks in advance!

Jim
 
Would like to know the make and model of the hard drive that escapes your
previous posts, and this one as well.
 
[email protected] said:
My question.. with no floppy drive on the computer, how can I 100%
reset a hard drive back to square one?
Click to expand...

Without floppy drive, you need a bootable CD.
See www.bootdisk.com.
There are many utilities that can make a bootable CD from bootable floppy
image.
The drive works fine in other
computers as long as it's not the main drive.
Click to expand...

Possibly it can be also a bad cable, or controller failure.

Good luck,
--PA
 
It is not a cable or controller as other Harddrives work fine.

The drive is a Western Digital 120GB.. I don't know the exact model
number off hand right now.

Here's the other thread on the same topic, and their solution:
http://groups.google.com/group/micr...p.general/browse_frm/thread/33e80b807467c2d5/

That thread says, "windows setup did work well after zero'ing the
partition table."

I don't even know what that means..

Jim
Click to expand...

Assuming that this is a clean installation on to a brand new
Western Digital hard drive, that is one right out of the box
from the factory, check that the jumper settings conform to
the type of IDE cable used and the connections that are being
made. Next, follow the instructions on setting the jumpers...
they have been changed. The one most common cause of this
symptom is having a jumper across the pins for Master or CSL
when the HD is the only device on the IDE cable.
 
This is not a new hard drive. It was my secondary drive from my main
machine. And if I pop it back in that machine as the secondary drive,
XP loads and sees the drive just fine. I've tried formatting and
resetting partitions from there with the same results.

It is a Western Digital 120GB (model# WD120JD). The jumper pins are
all blank which, according to the illustrations on the drive, means
"single or master." The drive is the only device on the first IDE
cable. The BIOS detects the drive correcetly. I booted off a Knoppix
CD (linux) and it was able to read the drive fine as well.

How does one "zero the partition table" - what software do I need to do
that? Can XP do it?

Jim
 
After failing to find any free utilities at download.com or on Google -
I went to westerndigital.com and downloaded an app called Data
Lifeguard for Windows. I installed the drive as a secondary on a
working XP machine, installed the software and ran it with the option
"Setup a new drive." A very basic wizard guided me through the
partition and format process, and when I put the drive in the new
machine as master, XP install worked as planned.

Thank you to everyone who helped me here.

Jim
 
This is not a new hard drive. It was my secondary drive from my main
machine. And if I pop it back in that machine as the secondary drive,
XP loads and sees the drive just fine. I've tried formatting and
resetting partitions from there with the same results.

It is a Western Digital 120GB (model# WD120JD). The jumper pins are
all blank which, according to the illustrations on the drive, means
"single or master." The drive is the only device on the first IDE
cable. The BIOS detects the drive correcetly. I booted off a Knoppix
CD (linux) and it was able to read the drive fine as well.

How does one "zero the partition table" - what software do I need to do
that? Can XP do it?

Jim
Click to expand...

What type of partition did you manually try to create? For
a bootable hard drive, it needs to be a primary partition and
not an extended partition with logical drive(s). Try this:
Place the HD as the only drive on the primary IDE controller
with no jumpers, i.e., as a single drive. Boot the computer
with the Windows XP cdrom. Let it run fdisk by removing the
current partition and then re-partitioning the HD. You might
want to choose the size of the primary partition or use the
entire 120 GB. XP setup will then format the HD (choose NTFS),
copy the installation files start the installation.
 
Reason I asked the question is to do your legwork for you.

Go here -
http://support.wdc.com/download/index.asp

At another computer with a floppy drive, download the Data Lifeguard Tools
11 for DOS. Make the bootable floppy from it. Assure it works. Using the
appropriate burning software, use this as template to create a boot CD.

At this website are instructions on how to use the software, specs on your
hard drive etc.

There is software for zeroing just the mbr area of a hard drive.

Zeroing an entire hard drive will also map out bad areas in the process and
keep it running silky. The software downloaded can write zeroes to the
entire hard drive.
 
Congratulations.

Find my response and do as I showed you to create such a boot CD for the PC
without a floppy. There's also one for creating a boot CD if you have
burner with the proper software for burning an ISO image to CD. It may save
your butt someday.
 
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