Can't boot - black screen blinking cursor

[operaflute]

Sorry folks - i missed all these replies. Here's an update.
I'm told my Dell can handle up to 160 GB drive.
I did not do a clean install to the new hard drive, but I tried awfully hard
to use a backup image that would boot fine. That being said...

I made a boot disc to try the next time I shut down and wouldn't you know
it, the dang thing has restarted normally a good 5 times now! I wonder if
when I installed the new hard drive I inadvertently transferred some bad
files to it... I really made a point not to do that, but after all the
repeated backing up/restoring I could have lost track. I'm out of town now,
and not brave enough to shut it down now, but if the problem recurs, I'll
certainly be back here!
Weird.
As always, many thanks to all!

 

[jafstraycat]

I'm not sure why Dell does it, but I recently had the same problem
with a Dimension 4550 that Dell sold with a 250GB hard drive. That's
all fine and dandy except it had BIOS version A03. Not until version
A04 did they add UDMA support for 48-bit LBA hard drives larger than
137GB. I was talking to two Dell techs who were completely oblivious
to this problem... go figure!! So whatever Dell tells you... take with
a grain of salt.

 

[operaflute]

The drive worked fine for 10 months, so I don't think it was a BIOS
incompatibility. I did end up putting in a new drive last week or so, and
then had the same problem. But now it's working fine (go figure) so I think
I inadvertantly transferred some bad files the first go around. (as much as
I meant not to, after a month of backing up and restoring I guess it's easy
to get mixed up.)
Now if only I could get SP3 installed without wrecking everything...