New Hard drive in older laptop

[Pompey©]

Hi
Ive just put a new 20gb hard (was 5gb) drive in a HP omnibook XE 2.. trying
now to install Xp but cd wont boot and all i get on screen is a prompt...
grateful for any help thanks

Dar

Pentium 3
128mb ram
Dar

 

[David H. Lipman]

From: "Pompey©" <[email protected]>

| Hi
| Ive just put a new 20gb hard (was 5gb) drive in a HP omnibook XE 2.. trying
| now to install Xp but cd wont boot and all i get on screen is a prompt...
| grateful for any help thanks
|
| Dar
|
| Pentium 3
| 128mb ram
| Dar
|

You can use the Floppy Disk setup method if you can't get into the BIOS of the notebook and
have it boot from the CDROM.

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/...db-5039-4955-bcb7-4fed408ea73f&DisplayLang=en

 

[Pompey©]

Thanks Dave.. will have a go.

Dar

 

[Mike Fields]

Hi
Ive just put a new 20gb hard (was 5gb) drive in a HP omnibook XE 2.. trying
now to install Xp but cd wont boot and all i get on screen is a prompt...
grateful for any help thanks

Dar

Pentium 3
128mb ram
Dar

Is that old enough to have the BIOS limitation of 8 gig or
something like that on the hard drive ?? There are several
barriers like that - seems to me 8 gig was one of them.

mikey

 

[David H. Lipman]

From: "Mike Fields" <[email protected]>


| Is that old enough to have the BIOS limitation of 8 gig or
| something like that on the hard drive ?? There are several
| barriers like that - seems to me 8 gig was one of them.
|
| mikey
|

Update the BIOS. Most BIOS had a 32GB limitation.

 

[Mike Fields]

From: "Mike Fields" <[email protected]>


| Is that old enough to have the BIOS limitation of 8 gig or
| something like that on the hard drive ?? There are several
| barriers like that - seems to me 8 gig was one of them.
|
| mikey
|

Update the BIOS. Most BIOS had a 32GB limitation.

Actually 8.4 was a common limit problem also ..
http://www.seagate.com/support/kb/disc/tp/8p4_barrier.html
and this one had some interesting comments on the other limits
that have been around in the past -- I think I hit several of them ...
http://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/Large-Disk-HOWTO-4.html

Hopefully, as Dave says, you can get an updated bios for your
system that should work the problem.

mikey

 

[Lil' Dave]

Some laptops have a hidden partition on their original hard drive. These
may contain many things. The synapse touchpad drivers for instance. The
install files for XP for instance. Part of the bios for instance.

If your original hard drive has this, it needs to be copied over to the new
one, the partition has to remain hidden.

 

[Ron Martell]

Hi
Ive just put a new 20gb hard (was 5gb) drive in a HP omnibook XE 2.. trying
now to install Xp but cd wont boot and all i get on screen is a prompt...
grateful for any help thanks

Dar

Pentium 3
128mb ram
Dar

Are you sure your model has a Pentium III CPU? The HP Product info
pages say that the Omnibook XE2 series had either Pentium II or
Celeron CPUs running at 300 or 333 mhz.

The product spec pages also indicate that 8.4 gb was the largest size
hard drive available in this series so you may have a BIOS limitation
problem with the larger drive. Try booting your computer with a
Windows 98 Startup Disk (get one from www.bootdisk.com if you don't
have one available) and use it to boot the computer.

When it stops at the A:\> prompt enter the following command:

FDISK /STATUS

Post the results back here. That will show us if the computer is in
fact recognizing the new hard drive properly, only recognizing part of
the capacity, or cannot use it at all.

Once we get the hard drive working then the next step is to get
Windows XP installed properly. That may or may not be possible, as
laptops typically contain proprietary components that require special
drivers from the manufacturer. A quick glance at the HP website shows
that there are Windows 2000 drivers for the Omnibook SE but not ones
for Windows XP.

Good luck


Ron Martell Duncan B.C. Canada
--
Microsoft MVP
On-Line Help Computer Service
http://onlinehelp.bc.ca

In memory of a dear friend Alex Nichol MVP
http://aumha.org/alex.htm