160 Gb Hard Drive is not Booting up

G

Guest

hi

I just bought a new maxtor 160 GB hard drive. I have tried to install windows XP professional onto it, but have had immense difficulty doing so. I am able to boot from the CD-Rom; when it does, the windows setup screen pops-up after loading some files. I believe the setup screen is the ms-dos version, i.e. blue background, grey letters. after going through the prompts, e.g. disclaimer\agreement, partitioning and formatting options, the setup finishes and begins to reboots. as the computer is booting, it should boot to the new hard drive and continue with the installation process, i.e. the nice screen with the windows logo, where you have to enter your registration key, etc.

My computer however cannot find the boot sector on the new drive
during the boot sequence the following message comes up
"searching for boot sector on IDE-0.......boot sector not found"
it then goes onto look at other devices to boot to, and eventually boots back to the CDrom, which then starts the ms-dos portion of the windows installation all over again. no matter what i do i cannot get my new 160 hard drive to boot up after that initial installation. However when i try the exact procedure over again on my old 80 GB hard drive, i can get it to boot and continue with the installation properly

Some of things I've noticed during boot up

1) my motherboard recognizes the new hard drive as 160 Gb hard driv
2) during the windows setup, it searches the hard drive for existing partitions it names my new along the following lines..
" 131 034 MB drive on IDE0...blah...blah has the following partitions:

i've tried a number of different partitions sizes, ranging from 50 Gb to the full 160 Gb as well letting maxblast 3 and windows partition the new. anyhow it seems like the windows setup program is not recognizing my new 160 Gb hard drive. I've read that the Windows XP professional does not have a 48 bit LBA and so does not support hard drives greater than 137 Gb. (windows xp sp1 however does support hard drives greater than 137 Gb--unfortunately i don't have a CD with SP1).

if someone could help me claen install XP onto the 160Gb hard drive, I'd really, really, really appreciate it

Thanks

Howi
 
G

Guest

I couldn't help noticing this post as I also installed a new 160 GB Maxtor two weeks ago. I installed XP Home and had no problems whatsoever. I hope you find your problem and I will be watching this to see if anyone has an answer.
 
K

krok dundee

Howard said:
hi.

I just bought a new maxtor 160 GB hard drive. I have tried to install windows XP professional onto it, but have had immense difficulty doing so. I am able to boot from the CD-Rom; when it does, the windows setup screen pops-up after loading some files. I believe the setup screen is the ms-dos version, i.e. blue background, grey letters. after going through the prompts, e.g. disclaimer\agreement, partitioning and formatting options, the setup finishes and begins to reboots. as the computer is booting, it should boot to the new hard drive and continue with the installation process, i.e. the nice screen with the windows logo, where you have to enter your registration key, etc.

My computer however cannot find the boot sector on the new drive:
during the boot sequence the following message comes up:
"searching for boot sector on IDE-0.......boot sector not found".
it then goes onto look at other devices to boot to, and eventually boots back to the CDrom, which then starts the ms-dos portion of the windows installation all over again. no matter what i do i cannot get my new 160 hard drive to boot up after that initial installation. However when i try the exact procedure over again on my old 80 GB hard drive, i can get it to boot and continue with the installation properly.

Some of things I've noticed during boot up:

1) my motherboard recognizes the new hard drive as 160 Gb hard drive
2) during the windows setup, it searches the hard drive for existing partitions it names my new along the following lines...
" 131 034 MB drive on IDE0...blah...blah has the following partitions:"

i've tried a number of different partitions sizes, ranging from 50 Gb to the full 160 Gb as well letting maxblast 3 and windows partition the new. anyhow it seems like the windows setup program is not recognizing my new 160 Gb hard drive. I've read that the Windows XP professional does not have a 48 bit LBA and so does not support hard drives greater than 137 Gb. (windows xp sp1 however does support hard drives greater than 137 Gb--unfortunately i don't have a CD with SP1).

if someone could help me claen install XP onto the 160Gb hard drive, I'd really, really, really appreciate it.

Thanks,

Howie
Hi Howard, one thing you omitted to mention is : did you use the
MaxBlast cd that comes with these drives, to prep and format this hd?
this is recommended ! .. rob
 
K

krok dundee

Howard said:
hi.

I just bought a new maxtor 160 GB hard drive. I have tried to install windows XP professional onto it, but have had immense difficulty doing so. I am able to boot from the CD-Rom; when it does, the windows setup screen pops-up after loading some files. I believe the setup screen is the ms-dos version, i.e. blue background, grey letters. after going through the prompts, e.g. disclaimer\agreement, partitioning and formatting options, the setup finishes and begins to reboots. as the computer is booting, it should boot to the new hard drive and continue with the installation process, i.e. the nice screen with the windows logo, where you have to enter your registration key, etc.

My computer however cannot find the boot sector on the new drive:
during the boot sequence the following message comes up:
"searching for boot sector on IDE-0.......boot sector not found".
it then goes onto look at other devices to boot to, and eventually boots back to the CDrom, which then starts the ms-dos portion of the windows installation all over again. no matter what i do i cannot get my new 160 hard drive to boot up after that initial installation. However when i try the exact procedure over again on my old 80 GB hard drive, i can get it to boot and continue with the installation properly.

Some of things I've noticed during boot up:

1) my motherboard recognizes the new hard drive as 160 Gb hard drive
2) during the windows setup, it searches the hard drive for existing partitions it names my new along the following lines...
" 131 034 MB drive on IDE0...blah...blah has the following partitions:"

i've tried a number of different partitions sizes, ranging from 50 Gb to the full 160 Gb as well letting maxblast 3 and windows partition the new. anyhow it seems like the windows setup program is not recognizing my new 160 Gb hard drive. I've read that the Windows XP professional does not have a 48 bit LBA and so does not support hard drives greater than 137 Gb. (windows xp sp1 however does support hard drives greater than 137 Gb--unfortunately i don't have a CD with SP1).

if someone could help me claen install XP onto the 160Gb hard drive, I'd really, really, really appreciate it.

Thanks,

Howie
ye Howie i forgot to mention, physically install the drive and then boot
of the MaxtorBlast CD.... follow instructions.. when completed remove
maxtor cd and boot of your xp cd and you're ready to go. :)
 
D

Daniel Oelke

thnx for your replies, krok and Greg
I have tried both the maxtor Maxblast 3 CD as well as the windows XP
professional CD to boot my computer and install a partition.

In both cases, the computer boots to the CDROM properly. And in both cases,
the same error message pops up
"Searching for boot sector to IDE0---not Found"


Howie

Howie,

I would try placing this IDE hard drive on the other IDE channel, on your
motherboard. If you are still unable to get the machine to recognize it,
then I would try another computer, if this is possible. If not, then I
would return the drive, or contact Maxtor. It is probably dead. If you do
try another computer, and the same results appear, then the hard drive is
definitely dead. One more thing, make sure to try another IDE (ATA) cable
as well. It could be that the cable is bad? Also, make sure that the
jumper settings are correct. Just a few ideas for you.
 

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