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roweski

Hi, i just completed a new build for my parents and the last peice to come was a 160gb maxtor hard drive. No accompanying CD's etc, just came in a jiffy bag. I hook it up, run xp pro setup disk, and when i restart, an error appears just after the bios loading screens.

I do some research and aparrently there needs to be some fiddeling in the bios. I need to change the IDE hard drive settings from 'Auto' to 'Large'. Except the cheapo motherboard i bought for the build [Elitegroup ECS 945gzt-m] doesn't have that option. So i muck about with the settings and try a few different things. Nothing seems to work.
Then all of a sudden, when i boot i get just a black screen with a white cursor prompt, ala MS-DOS.

I have tried hitting F8 for the boot menu and loading the CD-ROM, and the Hard drive; but nada. Again nothing works.

Any ideas on how to get out of this mess?

Set-up:
Pentium D 2.66
ECS 945gzt-m motherboard
Maxtor 160gb hard drive, diamond seris

MadGamer

Originally Posted by roweski

Hi, i just completed a new build for my parents and the last peice to come was a 160gb maxtor hard drive. No accompanying CD's etc, just came in a jiffy bag. I hook it up, run xp pro setup disk, and when i restart, an error appears just after the bios loading screens.

I do some research and aparrently there needs to be some fiddeling in the bios. I need to change the IDE hard drive settings from 'Auto' to 'Large'. Except the cheapo motherboard i bought for the build [Elitegroup ECS 945gzt-m] doesn't have that option. So i muck about with the settings and try a few different things. Nothing seems to work.
Then all of a sudden, when i boot i get just a black screen with a white cursor prompt, ala MS-DOS.

I have tried hitting F8 for the boot menu and loading the CD-ROM, and the Hard drive; but nada. Again nothing works.

Any ideas on how to get out of this mess?

Set-up:
Pentium D 2.66
ECS 945gzt-m motherboard
Maxtor 160gb hard drive, diamond seris

Hi roweski and welcome to PCHF, we have a wonderful team of experts and im sure we can solve your problem.

Can you go back into the BIOS and tell me the boot order. e.g.

CD Rom
Hard Disk

etc.

roweski

Thanks for the quick reply

1. Floppy
2. CD ROM
3. HDD

MadGamer

Ok you need to change the boot order so that the CD Rom is the first boot device.

CD Rom
Har Drive
Floppy Drive

roweski

Done. Its still stuck at the DOS-esque screen, though.
The DVD drive sounds like it tries to read the windows disk but then just stops :S

MadGamer

Ok, the next stap involves taking the case or side panel off. Can you check that the hard drive is set to Primary Master and that the CD is set to slave.

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