I've just fitted a new hard drive and I can't get the thing to work properly.

 

It's an IDE and it's the third one but I have set it as Secondary Master on the jumpers which I assume is the correct setting. The bios seems happy with it, Windows XP Hardware Profile says it's working correctly but it still doesn't show up in the file structure.

 

Am I missing something?

 

Does it have to be formatted as it's a master? The odd thing is when I shove a used HD in there it shows up no trouble.

 

Any suggestions?

Start->Control Panel->Administrative Tools->Computer Management, and then Storage->Disk Management. There you can format the new HD to work correctly with your system. As for jumper settings, CS (Cable Select) is usually the best option. It means the HD is automatically set to Secondary Master if it is placed at the outermost connector of the secondary IDE cable. That being said, the jumper set to Master and the HD being placed at the outer connector of the secondary IDE cable is fine.

Cheers Slaughter, that's got it. Now to fill it up!!!

Uriaheep, this happens in windows xp (and maybe Vista) with any newly purchased hard drives added to the system. Just do as what Slaughter suggests, you should be able to spot the unformated drive in the list to the right in the lower window. Right clicking should bring up the contextual menu you need to set up the drive. If you don't want anything fancy, then a basic disk is what you want and a single primary partition.

 

Note, a shorter way to reach the Computer Management window is to right click on the "Mi PC" icon and select the management option. I'm not sure if that's how it's called in English versions of Windows, but it's the one that by default appears bellow the find... option.

The odd thing is I have never had to go through this in the past. (but then again I only changed to XP about eight months ago) Even on the disc manager the damn thing didn't show. I had to 'Initialise' it and then format.

 

Anyway, it's all working now - Thanks guys.

 

The odd thing is I have never had to go through this in the past. (but then again I only changed to XP about eight months ago) Even on the disc manager the damn thing didn't show. I had to 'Initialise' it and then format.

 

Anyway, it's all working now - Thanks guys.

Deja Vu?

 

It's called My Computer->Manage Kret . That beings said, you are absolutely right!

Whilst on the subject of PC problems, I have just tried a fresh boot of another machine. After booting from XP disc I get the message 'NTLDR missing, restarting'. What the hell is NTLDR? I can't boot this machine as this just goes round on a loop.

ntldr is a critical file needed by windows nt/2k/xp/vista(?) both during install and during any bootup. Could you elaborate on the booting from xp disk? Did you try to install WinXP or did you just use it to start the recovery console?

 

One of the most likely reasons for this issue when installing is an incomplete pre-copy of the files that the installation does before actually installing. NTLDR is one of the last files copied. Because of this, the only solution is to start the installation over and keep watch and see if you notice any odd behavier during the pre-copy process.

 

Now if this is something that happened on an already installed machine and it has started doing this you're pretty much done for in regards of getting the OS to startup again. I think there's some technical way to fix this using the recovery console and some commands, let me look it up.

Cheers Kret - I was trying to install a new copy of windows XP onto a hard drive that previously had been a slave drive. The disc is formatted but has no windows on it. Jumpers are set to Master, and in the bios I set 1st boot up to CD.

 

My plan was to use this machine just for the internet so I have taken out the HD that has the OS installed and replaced it with this smaller HD.

Well, by the looks of it, you could try to use the recovery console booting from the windows's installation disk. The file is found in the i386 folder of the installation disk (where else?) and doesn't seem to need to be unpacked or anything. Just copy this file to the root of the system hard drive once you've backed up the one already there.

 

Note 1: this is a system file marked as read-only and hidden, you may need to fiddle with it's attributes before being able to replace it.

 

Note 2: make sure that the file is from the same service pack that is installed on the machine, otherwise you're risking instability.

 

Finally, even if you get it working again with this method, you should consider planing a clean install of the affected machine as things like these just contribute to Windows's "native degradation process".

 

EDIT:

 

Well, then restarting the installation of Windows should correct the issue, I'll just leave the rest of the prior text for those who are interested.

No, still doesn't work. The message is the same and on every boot it repeats the message.

 

I tried the same without the disk in and the same message appears. I'm wondering if the CD isn't reading correctly.

Anyway, thanks for the info.

Better take a look at what S.M.A.R.T. has to say, though I doubt if that will help.

 

I remember when my HD failed. Spectacularly too, I might add.

 

How spectacularly? Well, it blue-screened even when booting from the install CD and it attempted to read the HD. Had to go into the BIOS and format it. Needless to say it was a guaranteed data loss...

This problem can be caused by many things (I've had calls on this error numerous times), but it tends to boil down to bad sectors, other HD errors (SMART as Matri mentions) or a messed up boot sector (virus, sectors etc.). There's a few things to try:

 

- Use the Recovery Console to repair the master boot record (fixmbr, see description in the lined article)

- Use the Recovery Console to write a new boot sector (fixboot, see description in the lined article)

- Use the Recovery Console to check for bad sectors and the likes on your HD (chkdsk /r, see description in the lined article)

- Repair the Windows XP installation

- Find some HD test program to test your HD with

 

Hope that might help you. Let me know how it goes if you test any.

If you boot off a Windows install disc, the disc itself should ask if you want to boot from the CD or not before it starts loading it's install program. If you don't push anything, it'll attempt to boot from the HDD, and if that's empty it's not going to work.

 

If you don't even get this prompt then check the disc. If it reads fine in a different system, try to boot the machine using some other discs just to be sure your boot order/drive is actually working.

Just a thought. Have you checked the boot sequence in the BIOS? Make sure that the CD-ROM (or DVD) is before any of the hard drives. The missing ntldr message has often been misleading people to think they're actually booting from the optical drive, but they are really booting from the Hard Drive.

 

A similar problem is that either the disk has a damaged or non-existant boot data or that the optical drive isn't reading it properly.

Well thanks guys, plenty to try there - it will have to wait until this evening but I'll keep you posted.

SMART results have to be taken with a tablespoon of salt, or two.

 

The blue-screen HDD I mentioned? SMART said the drive was a-OK. *shoves the blue-screened monitor at it* Does this look OK to you!!?