OK you all really helped with my last problem, Thanks alot. Let's see what you can do with this one. Different computer. Has a 40 gig hard drive only reads 4 gigs. We've already tried resetting the jumpers and that didn,t work so we left it like it was. Now I,m reformatting the drive and it says it doesn't have enough space for winme, except it had winme on it. Can you make anything of that? Would be really grateful for some help!
Dos partition problem
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Hi,
Most likely things are
1) BIOS limitation
2) Drive has unallocated space.
First item is only solvable with flash BIOS upgrade. Second can be checked by booting with full Windows 98 Se boot disk from http://www.bootdisk.com. Download file and run to produce disk
Boot from floppy disk and run FDISK. Choose option for displaying disk partitioning (Option 4 I believe ) Look at percentage usage.
If it is not 100%, but only 10% or so. This is most easily solvable with Partition Magic or similar software.
hth
Ceri
Most likely things are
1) BIOS limitation
2) Drive has unallocated space.
First item is only solvable with flash BIOS upgrade. Second can be checked by booting with full Windows 98 Se boot disk from http://www.bootdisk.com. Download file and run to produce disk
Boot from floppy disk and run FDISK. Choose option for displaying disk partitioning (Option 4 I believe ) Look at percentage usage.
If it is not 100%, but only 10% or so. This is most easily solvable with Partition Magic or similar software.
hth
Ceri
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319 Posts
How to flash your BIOS
What size does the BIOS report it as? Some drives have a jumper to limit the drive size to a preset amount. This makes the drive usable in older PC's with the BIOS size limitation. If that jumper is there try removing it to see if you can use the whole drive. You can damage the hard drive if you run it with an incorrect size set in the bios. Another option is to use a PCI IDE controller that has an onboard BIOS. It may also help you get the faster speed for your hard drive if that motherboard doesn't support the faster ATA-100/133 speeds.
What size does the BIOS report it as? Some drives have a jumper to limit the drive size to a preset amount. This makes the drive usable in older PC's with the BIOS size limitation. If that jumper is there try removing it to see if you can use the whole drive. You can damage the hard drive if you run it with an incorrect size set in the bios. Another option is to use a PCI IDE controller that has an onboard BIOS. It may also help you get the faster speed for your hard drive if that motherboard doesn't support the faster ATA-100/133 speeds.
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319 Posts
If you swapped hard drives and the BIOS is not set to autodetect that would explain your current problem. It still thinks the old drive is connected. Simple fix though, just go into the BIOS and change the setting to autodetect.
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319 Posts
Does the drive show up as 4 g or 40 g in the PC's BIOS?
Have you tried deleting all the partitions and then creating a new blank one with fdisk?
You are probably getting the not enough space message because you still have files on the drive from the previous install. A format should fix that.
Have you tried deleting all the partitions and then creating a new blank one with fdisk?
You are probably getting the not enough space message because you still have files on the drive from the previous install. A format should fix that.
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896 Posts
Hi,
One other possibility is to use a drive overlay program. These "trick" BIOS into accepting hard disks larger than the normal BIOS limit. Look for these on the disk manufacturers web site.
hth
Ceri
One other possibility is to use a drive overlay program. These "trick" BIOS into accepting hard disks larger than the normal BIOS limit. Look for these on the disk manufacturers web site.
hth
Ceri
I have formated this disk many times. It's reading 38,000. Is that 4 gigs or 40 gigs? I have also tried splitting it into several partitions then putting it back into 1 partition. It says 100% usage right now but it still says I don't have enough space to load even Win98SE. Any ideas?
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5,524 Posts
Howdy omghelp...
Just a sugestion...
Remove all partitions reboot, then create a new Primary DOS partition ( use a W98 boot disk to create it, and when it asks you to use Large Disk Support type in yes ) using all avalible space, but do not format, boot to the W98 cd, start the install, and let W98 format the drive...
Also what is the manufacture of the hard drive ?
Just a sugestion...
Remove all partitions reboot, then create a new Primary DOS partition ( use a W98 boot disk to create it, and when it asks you to use Large Disk Support type in yes ) using all avalible space, but do not format, boot to the W98 cd, start the install, and let W98 format the drive...
Also what is the manufacture of the hard drive ?
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5,524 Posts
Well...
What I was getting at when I asked about the manufacture of the hard drive, is sometimes you can repair the drive with a Low Level Format on the drive...
If it is a Maxtor drive go here download Powermax, follow the instructions on the page to create the boot floppy, and Low Level Format the bad hard drive. If you want to try repair this drive...
http://www.maxtor.com/en/support/downloads/powermax.htm
If not that's ok too...
What I was getting at when I asked about the manufacture of the hard drive, is sometimes you can repair the drive with a Low Level Format on the drive...
If it is a Maxtor drive go here download Powermax, follow the instructions on the page to create the boot floppy, and Low Level Format the bad hard drive. If you want to try repair this drive...
http://www.maxtor.com/en/support/downloads/powermax.htm
If not that's ok too...
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