Hard drive swap not working out as expected

[zoya]

I just received an old computer with a frozen hard drive to refurbish for my niece. The offending drive had windows xp on it and I replaced it with a free 1.5 gig Western Digital unit a friend gave me. The computer boots fine but I have Windows 98 on it. I have a lliscensed copy of XP pro which I try install. I get part way through the install then everything just stops. Am I missing any steps? I rebooted to dos and had no luck with FORMAT/AUTOTEST. Thanks for any ideas you can throw my way.

[Alaron]

Only 1.5GB? That is too small for Windows XP. Even if you can get it to install, you won't have enough room for any programs or data.

What exact part of the install stops working?

[zoya]

I boot to the CD and it installs the drivers , etc. When windows tries to start the screen becomes a checkerboard of gibberish. I just looked at the XP-Pro system requirements and you are exactly right, it takes the whole thing. Just trying to put together a free pc for a 12 yr. old but it looks like I might need a bigger hard drive. What do you think the minimum size I can get away with? Thanks Alaron.

[Alaron]

A checkerboard of gibberish could be a video problem, but let's fix the hard drive issue first. You could get away with a smallish drive no problem, but they are harder and harder to find these days. Hard drive manufacturers have brought the price per GB down so much that anything under 80GB is tough to find.

But, Newegg does have this 40GB Western Digital unit: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822144126 Next step up is 80GB, which is probably overkill for your needs.

[zoya]

I appreciate your quick response to my questions Alaron. I probably will go with the link for the bigger hard drive you supplied. I love New Egg. I think the video is probably fine since the Windows 98 works flawlessly. Thanks again

[zoya]

I've installed the hard drive that you recommended . The system recognizes it but when it goes through the self check I get a PXE-E61 media test failure error message. I suspect maybe the ancient ribbon cable could be at fault and will pick one up as soon as possible. Anybody out there got any ideas?

[glc]

That simply means you have no bootable device right now. Set the CD drive first in the boot order and boot with the XP CD.

[zoya]

I thought that may have been the problem earlier and went into the setup and changed the boot order with the same result.Sorry for not including that in my previous message. Anyway, I can go as far with installing xp as loading the drivers. When it says windows is starting the screen freezes. I go back to the PXE-E61 media test failure message and wonder if I am missing some crucial step or something.The computer is very old and the ribbon cable looks to have the non used connection a little loose. I made sure the jumper was set for master and the system recognizes it. Thanks for your advice.

[glc]

Western Digitals *cannot* be set to Master if there is no slave present. Remove the jumper for "single" operation. Best thing you can do if the cable looks ratty is buy a new 80 wire Ultra ATA cable, connect the colored (usually blue) end to the mobo, connect the drive to the other end (usually black) and jumper the drive CS (cable select).

[zoya]

Thanks GLC, I'll give it a try.

[zoya]

Just tried it with jumper on cable select and then with no jumper at all. It still loads the drivers and then stops as before.

[glc]

Get a new cable. Test your ram with memtest86+.

www.memtest.org

Does the bios and XP setup see the full capacity of the drive? You *might* have a 8gb or 32gb bios limit if it's an old computer and this can cause issues with the install if the full capacity is not seen. A 40gb drive should be seen as 38. something gigs.