Computor Upgrade Question

[Extreme1]

I recently tried to update our PC. It is a Gateway 233 Pent II with (I think) 4 gig hard drive. I maxed the memory a few months ago which helped a lot.



I tried to install a new 40 gig hard drive (seagate), then I will upgrade to windows 98 SE and install a CD burner that I also purchased.



I installed the new drive, boot off a floppy and format the new drive. When the PC starts, it recognizes the D drive but I can't switch to it to load the OS. I get "Invalid Drive Specification".



Does anybody know what I can do to get it to work? TIA!

 

[DRR-24V]

Computer

I guess you have win 95 or 98 on it now. When you installed it did you run F DISK and then Format /s switch?. (You usually have to move a jumper on the second drive). Give me an E-Mail at -- email address removed -- if you have any more problems.

 

[BigDaddy]

FDisk is a must.



Also make the OS drive (C:\) the primary DOS partition.



When you have finished in FDisk, then reformat the new HDD.

 

[dmurdock]

i'm kinda confused here... is the old hard drive still in the system?

i'm assuming it is since the new drive is being recognized as the D drive. If the old drive is still in the system, can you see the new one in windows?



It could be that the bios of your motherboard doesn't recognize a drive that large... . there are ways around this, but give us some more details so we can figure it out. .



thanks

 

[BigDaddy]

i'm kinda confused here... is the old hard drive still in the system? i'm assuming it is since the new drive is being recognized as the D drive.

I missed that

 

[DGFoster]

First off you may be fighting a losing battle,you have a P2 probably the older arcitecture,I don't thing you will have enough processor spead to word all those new upgrades,also what size power supply do you have,you will need at leased 250 Watt,but to be safe id go with a good 300 Watt.

I have the same computer as a backup and I was limited to the upgrades it was cheaper to get a new Motherboard and an Athlon XP processor along with that Seagate and some DDR Ram you would have one heck of a system.

You can get a Athlon 1600+ for about $120 or less and a good Motherboard for about $100 all you would need it some DDR 2100 memory,$85 for some good Kingmax 256 memory.

And if you had to change your case,you can get one for about $50.

Good Luck,if you need more advise you can PM me

 

[Extreme1]

More info:

The hard drive is a replacement, the old one is disconnected when I try to get the new one going.



I did:



fdisk

Enable large disk support: y

create primary DOS partition

max available size for DOS partition & make active: y

Reboot

format c: /s



After format is complete, the info goven states that it is an 8 gig hard drive. I read in the Seagate info that if the drive is too big to be recognized at full size, it would run as an 8 gig.



The biggest problem I'm having is that at this point I need to load the operating system (98 se to replace 95 on the old drive) but I can't get the PC to see the D drive (the existing cd player) so I can't load the operating system. I keep getting "Invalid drive specification".



Other tidbits:



When I updated the RAM, I used 133MgHz, 128MB chipsets.



The motherboard is a pentium II LX.



The power supply is 200 watt.



The reason I began this journey into the unknown is because the current hard drive had a bad couple months where it would come up into diskscan due to surface issues.



I don't need more speed, I just want a reliable hard drive and to be able to burn some CD's. I mainly use the PC for this and homework.

 

[DGFoster]

You must go into the bios and change the settings to make the CD ROM the first boot devise,so it will boot to CD,it is probably set on the floppy for the first bood devise,but it has to be the hard drive untill you get the operating system loaded,and then you can change it back,but you dont have to it will boot to the HD.

Good Luck

 

[dmurdock]

Your motherboard probably doesn't support boot from cd... however, it doesn't really matter. The problem is that you don't have dos drivers loaded for the cd-rom. This is a super-easy fix.



click below to download this file



You will be asked if you want to run from the current location or save it, choose save (then remember where you saved it)



http://dos.li5.org/IMGS/WIN98SE.EXE



This will creat a program that when executed will create win98 bootdisks, which when you boot the system using these disks, you will be asked "enable cd-rom support"... choose yes, then your off to the races... .



if you need further help, pm me, I'll even give you my phone number and walk you through it if u like. .

 

[dmurdock]

What OO said...