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General => Technical Help => Topic started by: Roger The Hat on Sunday 24 May 09 19:00 BST (UK)
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A friend of mine (really!) had problems with his computer which he thought best rectified by reinstalling XP SP2.
After the initial configuration check all he got were repeated errors stating "XP setup cannot copy x file. Press escape to skip file or f3 to quit".
I took my original XP disk to his house, and got the same result.
Thinking it might be his CD-Rom at fault I put his hard drive into my machine to try and load XP.
All I can get is "Hard Drive Not Found".
1. The drive is not showing up in the BIOS set-up.
2. The drive is jumpered correctly (according to the diagram).
3. The drive was working, allegedly, albeit very slowly, and with some functions, like sound and connectivity, intermittent.
Putting it plainly, is the drive knackered, or does anyone have any other ideas, please?
Roger The Hat.
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No solution to offer, just bookmarking so that I can possibly learn something.
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Hi Roger :)
Not really offering a solution but you said that:
A friend of mine (really!) had problems with his computer
What were the problems that he had? It might help to diagnose the subsequent problem.
Gadget
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Hi, Gadget,
As I said, it was odd things like running very slowly, loss of audio, internet connection problems. I know the machine was fine earlier in the week, but I also know he's prone to mending things that aren't broken!
Sorry I can't be more exact, but I'm more concerned that the drive wasn't recognised by my own machine.
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Is the hard drive SATA?
You need the drivers on a floppy to get SP2 to recognise it, or get / create an XP SP3 install disk.
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No, Wul, it's IDE.
It's getting closer to the bin!
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What make and drive type is it?
Also does the bios see the hard drive?
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Don't bin it! It's probably perfectly readable as a slave drive. I had a complete disk failure and thought I'd lost everything (and no backup, of course :-[). However, life became rosier when I bought a disk caddy and stuck it in there - all information returned, wagging its tail behind it.
Mike
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It's a Western Digital Protege, WD400 40GB.
My BIOS doesn't "see" it.
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WD are usually good drives, how is it set up cable select or master/slave and is it a 40 or 80 conductor cable?
Try a new cable and check it on the primary and secondary channels in case its a cable or motherboard problem.
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It's a 40 cable, no jumper in his machine, jumpered Master/Slave in mine, which was heavily upgraded, with new cables, less than a month ago.
My original drive works fine.
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Have you tried the drive in your machine?
cable select as you likely know only works with an 80 conductor cable, well 79 conductor cable really...
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The drive should be jumpered in his machine.
http://wdc.custhelp.com/cgi-bin/wdc.cfg/php/enduser/std_alp.php?p_cats=123&p_cv=1.123&p_pv=&p_prods=&p_search_text=jumper%2Bsettings&p_new_search=1
That is a WD link about their drives.
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The only thing I haven't tried is slaving it to my drive, in my machine.
I've got a couple of soundcards with a break-out box, so there physically isn't room (and I'm not disturbing them!).
The bin, the bin. ;D ;D
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I checked the link, Wul, and if you look under ten pin, for single drive, it shows no jumper ???
As I said, in this configuration, it was working fine on his machine earlier in the week!
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Just get 24 of these puppies.....
;D ;D ;D
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=96dWOEa4Djs&fmt=22
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;D ;D ;D should have added to the youtube clip, don't try this at home folks!
but fun to watch!... she says looking around and seeing 4 spare drives lying around
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Okay, I've finally got the drive working; I'll just give you the summary.
I've found that XP will load, and is now running normally on the original machine, after reformatting the drive to FAT32.
XP would Not load, or run normally, on any machine, under NTFS.
I have no idea why.
Thanks to all those who scratched their heads for my friend's benefit.
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All I can suggest is to make sure the IDE ribbon cable is plugged in properly. If it is, unplug it and plug it back in (from motherboard and from the drive itself) and see if that sorts the problem out.
Drives don't last forever and there's a possibility that the drive itself has died or (even worse) the IDE controller on the motherboard has died.
How old is the machine?
You can buy IDE drives now at silly prices (I bought 1TB for £50) so it might be worth trying a new drive (I get most of my components from ebuyer.com) and if that doesn't fix it, might mean something worse. Don't forget to try a replacement ribbon cable if possible. If it doesn't turn out to be the drive and you've bought a replacement one it can always be plugged into a new PC as a slave drive.
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Thanks, Zeb,
I've left it as it is, i.e. a 40gb drive formatted FAT32, and working, with no apparent problems.
As I said previously, the drive wouldn't install XP following several attempts, on either my friend's 4 year old machine, or my relatively new machine, with new cables, trying to format it NTFS.
I think it's one of those problems that isn't going to have a logical answer.