[Bubba]

it'd have to be pretty old for the bios not to accept big disks.

dave, I'd put za on first just for piece of mind, but I'm a bit paranoid about such things.

[dave]

word i know where your coming from bubbs - when we got broadband the telewest guy came round to install it all and it was at the time when that Blaster worm was doing the rounds. my laptop had the worm before the telewest guy had even left the room!

[Jim]

Dave, you have PM.

ps

its partition with 2 T's
word

[dobbin]

some very good advice on this thread, very good indeed.

Something to make you sick : flattening it to reinstall was unnecessary - partition magic allows you to resize partitions on the fly.

Something to help the missing disk : disk manager should see all the disk as appears to the operating system, whether or not it has been partitioned yet. However, I dont know anything about the pre SP1 fault. Boot the machine and see what BIOS recognises the drive as. If BIOS flashes past too quick, try pressing F2, delete or f10. You should be able to see what BIOS thinks is attached - thereby confirming the size of the drive.

Something to ease your fear of getting infected - if you are behind a router as you mentioned then your ports are not visible to the internet. Anyone attempting to make a connection to your ip address can only conect to the ports of your router - which should be closed. Basically, behind a router you cannot be infected by someone port scanning - unless you are forwarding vulnerable ports to your machine. the only way you can get infected from behind a router is if you visit a dodgy website and allow it to run scripts, or for something to be mailed in.

Finally - re the partitions, consider splitting the drive in two, installing windows and apps on first part, then data on second. Use ghost to take an image of the windows and apps partition, store this on data (or better still on an external drive). Get it installed, so you are happy with it, then ghost it off. When it goes tits simply drop the image back on - computer rebuilt in 10 minutes!

[simes]

it'd have to be pretty old for the bios not to accept big disks.

its not unheard of though, even now. i spent ages sorting out a friends a while ago and outdated bios supplied with the motherboard was the problem. i agree its unlikely but just thought id mention it anyway. si.

[simes]

...and i agree with dobbins post above - ghost is a winner!

[Jim]

outdated bios, my motherboard is maybe 6 months old max, flashed last week, there were 5 version updates from the one that was on it.
Most newish motherboards are crash free now a days so you should be able to flash the bios without worry

[dave]

have checked and the bios sees the full size of the drive.

am currently downloading SP2 on the new box. at least getting it onto the tinternet through the router was piss - just plugged it in and off it went.

[dave]

OK fuck a duck, here goes....

spends like an hour or whatever downloading all the windows updates and then the SP2. it all installs fine, then when you restart at the end to complete it, it just repeatedly restarts every 20 seconds or so. can't do owt bar getting to to boot from the XP disk. fucking sack of shite. SP2 been out over a year now, how come they havent even got it fucking right yet. looks like i need a better copy of XP with SP2. Jim you got anutha PM word.

[simes]

everyone i know that has installed sp2 for xp has had problems. some have been so bad that theyve given up and wiped windows and programs to start again. its shockingly good at cocking stuff up for you. just install the critical updates, or use third party updates where they exist.

[dave]

the problem i have is i need at least sp1 to see the full HD - can you still get SP1 from the windows update site? Also on our laptop installing SP2 made it bluescreen, so we didn't bother with Sp2, but then when you try and run windows updates it seems to not let me get any further updates until i'd got SP2.

luckily for me i've got all this at the start and so reinstalling everything and starting again is not a problem. I just need with a way to only download SP1, or an XP cd with a stable SP2 already on it. Hopefully i've got the latter in the pipeline at the moment.

[simes]

ive got sp1 on a cd. if youre struggling i could post you a copy. let me know. simes303@hotmail.com. cheers.

[dobbin]

if you get stuck I think I have xpsp2 bundled - i.e. it installs to sp2. let me know dawg.

[dave]

cheers dobbers/simes, if the arse falls out of my current plan i'll holler at you fo' sure.

of course this whole episode could have been avoided if i'd have just put my hand in my pocket and forked out 70 beans on a proper copy of Xp, but as a true yorkshireman i don't wanna pay for something that is basically shit but necessary.

[dobbin]

Alternatively, you could have sent me a message and asked for my copy of partition magic. Then you'd have resized the bona fide install that came with it and probably onsighted 8b at the weekend. Nevermind. Theres always next time.

[dave]

you know what, that makes me feel a whole lot better.....muthafukka. :roll:

problem with leaving the existing Xp on was that i would have carried on thinking everything was fine, then if anything went wrong down the line i'd have gone to reinstall from my CD and then had all these problems i'm having now but with the added complication of having loads of software installed and loads of data to preserve whilst trying to sort it all out.


P.S. what makes you think i didn't onsight 8b on the weekend?

[dobbin]

good point.

I think you probably didnt onsight 8b at the weekend as I havent heard you mention you were going to Skye at any point, and the only 8b's you (or I) are onsighting (or succeeding on at all for that matter) are ones in Skye.

[dave]

maybe i hopped on the private jet to magic wood.



or maybe i just went to gardoms and bust a tip :cry: .

[Jim]

get your arse round to J footworks, he's got the real deal for ya. Been running stable on my machine for about a month

[dave]

daamn straight - its needs to be stable like a bethlehem maternity ward.

[dave]

yo check it out word

got a better copy of XP with sp2 installed last nite - partitioning worked fresh and eeveryting seems ill - mad props to big J for stepping up to the plate with a dope Xp flava - queers ears.

so heres a bit of trivia for you: my machine thinks that its got a floppy drive attached, but it hasn't. I.e. theres a drive A: showing as a floppy, its obvisouly thinks its there, even comes up on the bios or when trying to boot from CD or whatever, but there isn;t a floppy drive attached. Is this just a case of them not putting the right jumpers on the muthaboard soemwhere or summert? I mean its not a problem, just strange.

Also, how do you get drives etc metworked tween the 2 machines? is it simply a case of selecting the "share drive" etc options on each drive, is this secure enough etc? word.

[dontfollowme]

From memory Dave I think you have to ensure both computers are in the same workgroup e.g. MSHOME

[Bubba]

Yeah, you'll also need to set the share options to share each drive as well.

I'm not sure that they *have* to be in the same workgroup but it'll probably make things easier if they are.

Dunno about the floppy thing, as DFM says, maybe a BIOS setting somewhere?

[Jim]

It'll defo be a bios setting, thell be an option for floppy enable/disable. you just gotta find it. should be quite easy. nowt to do with jumpers I recon.
Did you resolve the HD issue?
what puta did you get after all?

[dave]

yes this better Xp recognizes all the space on the HD, i just had to setup a partition in all the available space in setup, then delete them all which made it combine all the unformattted space together, the repartition again. piss.

box is the one i got that spec for on anutha thread. sempron 2600+, asrock board, 512 ram, 160gb HD, all mod cons, fully fitted carpets, off-street parking, full service history and GSOH essential. No time wasters.