[Tyler5690]

I had an older computer that was running out of space. Last year, I bought a new case and a 120 GB hard drive for it. Because of BIOS issues, the drive only registered as 30 GB. Well, today I decided to upgrad my motherboard and processor. The system boots and will run a linux live cd, but Windows will not boot anymore. Does the hard drive need to be reformatted, or is something else the problem?

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Hi there

I am assuming that your system does detect the hard drive presence & starts to boot up but Windows doesn't finish loading, right?

If so, then the problem is likely to be the fact that you have replaced the motherboard. The new motherboard will have a different chipset & onboard devices etc to the old board & so requires different drivers to be installed. You could try running a repair installation of XP which may or may not work.

My advice however is don't bother. If you have stuff on the drive you want to keep then try booting up in safe mode (Press the F8 key repeatedly the second Windows starts to load & select the Safe mode option). If XP loads ok in safe mode, then you may be able to copy your files across to another drive. Alternatively, you could install the hard drive in another computer as a slave & transfer files that way.

If you can do this or if there's nothing you need to keep on the drive, then I suggest you perform a clean installation of XP. When you start the XP install you will have the option to delete & create partitions. At this point you could delete the 30GB partition & create a new partition(s) as your system will now recognise the full drive capacity instead of just 30GB of it.

[Samm]

Hi there

I am assuming that your system does detect the hard drive presence & starts to boot up but Windows doesn't finish loading, right?

If so, then the problem is likely to be the fact that you have replaced the motherboard. The new motherboard will have a different chipset & onboard devices etc to the old board & so requires different drivers to be installed. You could try running a repair installation of XP which may or may not work.

My advice however is don't bother. If you have stuff on the drive you want to keep then try booting up in safe mode (Press the F8 key repeatedly the second Windows starts to load & select the Safe mode option). If XP loads ok in safe mode, then you may be able to copy your files across to another drive. Alternatively, you could install the hard drive in another computer as a slave & transfer files that way.

If you can do this or if there's nothing you need to keep on the drive, then I suggest you perform a clean installation of XP. When you start the XP install you will have the option to delete & create partitions. At this point you could delete the 30GB partition & create a new partition(s) as your system will now recognise the full drive capacity instead of just 30GB of it.

[Tyler5690]

Actually, it doesn't start to load Windows. I am just beginning a repair installation; that was my first thought too. If not, a clean install will have to do I guess.

[jrm20]

I had an older computer that was running out of space. Last year, I bought a new case and a 120 GB hard drive for it. Because of BIOS issues, the drive only registered as 30 GB. Well, today I decided to upgrad my motherboard and processor. The system boots and will run a linux live cd, but Windows will not boot anymore. Does the hard drive need to be reformatted, or is something else the problem?

as for the 120gb harddrive only showing up as 30gb. You need to make shure that you have atleast service pack 1 if not service pack 2 on the maching if you have windows xp. I dont know how you will fix this because you said you cant get into windows anymore.. Make shure you check if you have the drive partitioned into multiple drives and one of the partitions isnt showing up the next time that you get win xp to working.

In windows, up to you if you reformat the harddrive. If you get into windows again right click on my computer and goto manage, then disk management. Look and see if you have any unpartitioned or un formatted parts of the harddrive if you infact set up multiple partitions/drives..

as for windows not booting up, you changed the master boot record somehow by using linux I dont know how because its a live cd...

You can get windows to boot up by taking out all cd's and floppy disks. Then insert a windows disk xp im guessing that you have. Set up in your bios that the cd rom drive is the first boot up device then floppy then harddrive, now save the bios settings and reboot with the xp cd in the drive. Dont press anything and it should boot up in windows because of that xp cd in the drive. Find a way to backup all the files that you need or want to save then I would do a full format on that harddrive. If that is your only drive then you will have to setup windows and linux all over again.. But that is the only way I know of to fix the problem you stated above about the harddrive only showing up as 30gb..

If you do what I said above, (its up to you) and you reinstall windows make shure you get service pack 1 atleast but try and get service pack 2 to fix the harddrive problem.

BY the way when you get a new cpu or mobo you should always do a full format on your harddrive and reinstall windows from scratch. Your responsible for saving any data that you want to keep on the drive.

I really cant tell you why it wont boot up in windows because I dont have enough info but I do know why your 120gb harddrive only shows up as 30gb. (read above on the service pack part)

Good luck..

[Samm]

XP (with/without SP1) only has an issue with partitions or drives over 32GB if the partition is created as FAT32. As long as you use NTFS, XP should be able to recognise & use the entire 120GB.
The only other issue XP has (pre-SP1) is it's ability to recognise drives larger than 137GB due to the 48bit LBA issue.

The chances are, if the 120GB drive was originally installed in an old computer, the bios would have had a 32GB limitation & hence the reason for only the first 32GB being used.