maxtor and xp pro

[Guest]

I have a maxtor diamond pro hd (about one month old) and I've had to reinstall and reformat it about 3 times. Now, when booting up the computer, and if I don't have the windows cd in thre drive, the computer will give me "insert system disk or something like that, so then I put the cd in and then i get the auto recovery console which does nothing. can anyone help me?

 

[Jerry]

You can't boot from a hard drive unless it has a primary partition and it is
active.

I have a maxtor diamond pro hd (about one month old) and I've had to

reinstall and reformat it about 3 times. Now, when booting up the computer,
and if I don't have the windows cd in thre drive, the computer will give me
"insert system disk or something like that, so then I put the cd in and then
i get the auto recovery console which does nothing. can anyone help me?

 

[Nathan McNulty]

I'm going to respond to this one and hope the other post gets left alone.

Anyways, have you installed Windows XP to this harddrive yet? When you
boot off your Windows XP CD, isntead of pressing R to go into the
Recovery Console, choose to Install Windows. The only reason I can
think of the computer jumping straight to the Recovery Console for is if
it was an OEM computer such as a Dell, HP, Compaq, etc., and then the XP
Install CD may be "customized."

Here is what I would suggest doing (as long as you don't have anything
on the drive you want to keep). Put the Windows XP CD in your CD-ROM
drive. Boot up the computer and enter the BIOS (sometimes called Setup)
by pressing whatever the screen tells you (usually del key, F1, F2). You
may have to press the escape key if a logo shows up when you boot. This
will allow you to see what is going on behind the scenes. Anyways, once
in the BIOS, find the booting sequence and set the CD-ROM first. Now
save changes and exit. It will reboot, boot off the Windows XP CD, now
it should allow you to Install. When it asks, go ahead and
partition/format the harddrive (I highly recommend NTFS (Quick)). Now
install will finish and you should have Windows fully set up

Nathan McNulty

 

[Miss Perspicacia Tick]

I'm going to respond to this one and hope the other post gets left
alone.

Anyways, have you installed Windows XP to this harddrive yet? When
you boot off your Windows XP CD, isntead of pressing R to go into the
Recovery Console, choose to Install Windows. The only reason I can
think of the computer jumping straight to the Recovery Console for is
if
it was an OEM computer such as a Dell, HP, Compaq, etc., and then the
XP Install CD may be "customized."

Here is what I would suggest doing (as long as you don't have anything
on the drive you want to keep). Put the Windows XP CD in your CD-ROM
drive. Boot up the computer and enter the BIOS (sometimes called
Setup)
by pressing whatever the screen tells you (usually del key, F1, F2).
You may have to press the escape key if a logo shows up when you
boot. This will allow you to see what is going on behind the scenes.
Anyways, once
in the BIOS, find the booting sequence and set the CD-ROM first. Now
save changes and exit. It will reboot, boot off the Windows XP CD, now
it should allow you to Install. When it asks, go ahead and
partition/format the harddrive (I highly recommend NTFS (Quick)). Now
install will finish and you should have Windows fully set up

Nathan McNulty

Celeste Morrow wrote:

Sorry, Celeste, it appears that Nathan is incapable of reading a post
properly. I hate to say it, but it appears the drive is failing, which isn't
unusual with a Maxtor. As it's still under warranty, you need to call their
technical support and RMA it. I've seen many Maxtors fail within the first
month.

 

[Guest]

thank you for your help. Nathan, I've done what you've said numerous times, but as for the active partition, I would assume that the NTFS would set that up. THis is not an OEM cd; and it is legit. I think it is the drive also. sorry about the double post; every time I would post it would say "error, try again later"