I have seen this problem several times. Normally it means you have a drive bigger than the operating system will handle.
The first thing to do is check to see if you have Service Pack two or higher. Service pack one only supports internal or external drives up to 120 Gigabyte. That’s OK! I didn’t believe it either.
How do I know what service pack I have?
Click the start button. Right click “My Computer”. ( This could be on the desktop on certain computers). Left click “properties”. Wait for the screen to load all the way. You should see: Service Pack one or two. If it doesn’t say anything you probably have the original release of XP. If you do not see any release number you definitely need to update you computer. The newer releases were to plug holes in the security of the operating system and to prevent hackers from altering your security settings along with other critical reasons. Please see the WARNING below before you start.
Here’s what to do:
Left click on your start button > Left click “All Programs” > Click on widows update. This will take you to a Microsoft web site. From there you can update to service pack two and even three (see warning below) if you wish. Follow the instructions. WARNING !! Be sure you have DSL or CABLE high speed connection. These really take a long time to do. It is close to impossible to update these if you still have dial-up.
What if that doesn’t work?
Now you may need to be sure you want to open the case and go deeper. You may want to seek professional advice if you are uncomfortable doing this. If you want to try to troubleshoot you can try this: (Be sure your computer is turned off)
- Open the computer case
- Verify that the cable going to you drive is securely attached.
- If it is an internal drive you may need to remove the drive and verify that the jumper setting is correct. If it is the only drive on that cable it should be set to master. If you have the newer ATA (seriel) hard drive just check to be sure the cable is securely attached. There is no jumper on this kind of drive.
- If you are installing a second drive, you should understand the master/slave relationship. That’s because it depends on if it is installed on the same cable as the master (main) hard drive or not. If you have an ATA (seriel) drive disregard this step.
- If you do not understand this relationship seek help.
- You may need to hook up a drive that you know is good so that you can zero into the problem.
- You can try replacing the ribbon cable going from the motherboard to the hard drive. However, this very rarely is the problem.
- What else could be wrong?
Your motherboard could be bad. You need to be sure of this. If you want to be sure I would suggest to find a professional that can verify it and that can tell you what to do.
WARNING!
When you update, it may want you to update to Internet explorer 7 and/or Service pack 3. If you install Explorer 7 it may slow down your computer due to the way it handles RAM. See how it works on your system. If it does slow you down you can go to Control Panel and uninstall it. I do NOT recommend installing service pack 3 at this time. Although some may disagree with this, I am talking from experience. I needed to uninstall it several times. It either slows the computer down significantly or it freezes it. I have also seen were it lets viruses in when it downloads. Not a real good thing! I tell people to avoid it. If you try it and it doesn’t work you can uninstall it through the control panel’s uninstall utility. If it freezes your computer you may have to force the computer to reboot. Then restart it and rapidly tap the F8 key to get to “Safe Mode”. Then go to the control panel and uninstall it. I have also seen were people can not connect to the Internet after the updates also. It appears it handles it different if you have an Intel processor versus an AMD processor. It appeared that AMD processors had trouble handling it.