[gruff]

Pressing Shift+F10 at the 'Install Now' screen has opened a DOS 'cmd' window.

I began my IT career (then called, DP ~ 'Data Processing') as a DOS programmer back in 1984.

What DOS commands would you like me to enter?

Thanks for your help,
geoffas.

[Macboatmaster]

1. Before we go to that , I have just examined the motherboard and I think I should have done so before
That board, unless I have misread it only has ONE IDE ATA133 header, so where is the optical drive connected

[gruff]

Your research is correct... the mobo does only have one IDE ATA133 ATA header.
The Samsung SATA dvd-rw drive is plugged into one of the four SATA headers.

[Macboatmaster]

Go back to BIOS make the HDD the first boot device, not the second.
Make the DVD the second boot device
It will not of course boot from the HDD, as there is not boot there.
It should then boot from the DVD

Try again - please remember to check in BIOS that this motherboard, is not like mine where you may configure HDD as first boot device, but you then have to check that it is the correct HDD, in otherwords, on the one I am typing this with a Gigabyte motherboard, boot priority only lists HDD, then on enter you configure which HDD.
I cannot see that applying in your case but please do check

The reason we are changing the boot priority is that as you know when windows 7 is installed it creates a 100Mb partition which is used for boot and recovery as well, and we need to eliminate any possibility that the error is caused by the boot priority.

If that does not work go back to cmd prompt and run diskpart, using the appropriate commands to select the disc, format it, create one primary partition and try again
http://www.pronetwor...vd-t112571.html

http://social.techne...2f-f602e670d55c

[Macboatmaster]

I have just downloaded the manual for the motherboard
http://www.asrock.co...=ALiveNF6G-VSTA

Please do the same - if the above does not work

I am NOT certain but having read the manual do page 39, 40 41 and 46 contain the answer. - is that HDD configired in the IDE options in BIOS

[gruff]

My apologies for not getting back sooner, something urgent came up (not related to what we're doing here).

I went back to BIOS and made the HDD the first boot device, not the second.
I made the DVD the second boot device.
I checked all the BIOS setting that you suggested and they're as they should be. (There is only one HDD in the pc).

The Windows installer booted from the DVD. Same problem.

So, I used diskpart and delted any existing partitions, made a new parittion for the whole disk and formatted it.
Whilst I was in the cmd window, I switched to C: and tried a DIR. The drive was there and the DIR worked (showing 0 files, 298.1GB free space).

I tried installing Windows. Same problem.

I checked through the mobo manual pages 39~46 and can confirm all the BIOS settings are as they should be.

Thanks for your help.

[Macboatmaster]

There is something extremely strange here I think, unless I have missed the obvious

I think it best we try a boot from Puppy first and see if that will run, this will test the hardware generally, but not of course the HDD as Puppy runs in ram

Please make this and see if puppy will run and if recognises the HDD, then open the drive and see if there is anything there.

The difference between the 320 and the 298 is of course that the 320 is 1000 Mb per Gigabyte and the 298 is 1073
There is a 7.37% pseudo-overhead in capacity with hard drives. Manufacturers use 1,000,000,000 Bytes as one gigabyte while operating systems use 1,073,741,824 bytes as one gigabyte

Here is Puppy
http://www.geekstogo...over-your-data/

I appreciate it says to recover your data, but please run it and see what occurs.


If that works OK please then try and install Ubuntu
http://www.ubuntu.com/

If that will install, then although windows7 is very selective, insofar as relates to the issues we have discussed, I am beginning to suspect the DVD

If you have an XP or Vista install, you could try that in place of ubuntu and then see if 7 will accept the install from the HDD when Ubuntu or XP or Vista are already installed

[gruff]

Thanks, I'm on it.

However, there has been a development... as I mentioened using diskpart, etc the drive looked good from the C: prompt.
So, I removed it and added it to an old XP Pentium 3 pc as a slave. The bloody thing worked! And to *really* prove it,
I copied over a couple of folders from the master drive and they showed in windows explorer.

The drive is now back in my friend's pc and I'll try installing something other than Windows 7 to it.

[Macboatmaster]

That would not surprise me, as using it as a slave and simply copying files to it is not of course the same as installing an operating system

Also just been reading through the topic again

Quote

I set the jumper on his 320GB drive to Master and attached it to the black plug on the very end of the IDE cable

is the connector at the other end BLUE

[gruff]

Yes the IDE cable has a black plug on one end and a blue plug on the other.
The blue plug is connected to the mobo's blue IDE socket.

[Macboatmaster]

Ok, just checking because as I am sure you know, the OLD IDE cables that did not have the blue motherboard connector did not alllow as faster transfer of data, and although I have not had experience of the situation I was wondering if by chance you had the old type 40 wire IDE cable

Wait to here from you offline now for dinner for a couple of hours

[gruff]

Checking is good - it may be something simple that I've done wrong somewhee along the line.

Puppy runs and I set to install. I had to use gparted to remove the NTFS partition and create a new ext4 patrition.
It's been running for 20 mins or s now and is not showing any progress in the progress bar. I'm going to kill it, reboot and try ubuntu....

I can't install ubuntu cos it sets the screen resolution to something like 640 x 320 and this means that I can only see the top half of
any windows on the desktop.

I've had enough of this for today, so let's call it 'a night'.

I'm going to watch a film and hit the lager. BFN.

[Macboatmaster]

OK the purpose of puppy was simply to see if it would run, not necessarily to install it and then when it was running in ram, you can open the hard drive as shown on the link.
You do not have to do anything to the hard drive as it is running only in ram.

See you later I am working tomorrow - back online about 2000 depending on when I finish.


I am concerned why the original Seatools and the gparted take so long
Seagate took over Maxtor and some of the original seatools do not run so well on the maxtor drives, that may be the reaon for the extremely long time on the seatools full test

When you had the hdd connected to the other computer you could have run a chkdsk /r on that drive and seen if it ID any bad sectors

It seems strange does it not that all was Ok before you installed in it in the new case.

Talk when we both come back

Older Ubuntu sometimes allows a better resolution without the problem of entering the terminal and running a sudo apt get cmd to load the 3rd party driver for the graphics
http://releases.ubun...esktop-i386.iso

Goodnight

[Macboatmaster]

Back online how are we doing

[gruff]

I changed the screen and was then able to see the ubuntu install screen. I selected 'use all the drive' and it showed 320GB and it has now began installing (9:30 pm)... and finished at 10:10 pm. However, after pressing <enter> to complete the installation, it restarted the pc, but it doesn't boot.

Yes, it is indeed strange that just moving it from one case to another could've caused all this. I also find it strange that installing my spare, wiped and formatted, 40GB hdd and trying to install to that has bricked it. I tested it in the caddy only minutes before I put it in the pc, so I know it was working ok.

Today, the strangeness continues... the reason why I changed the screen is because when I went to turn on the screen it had died. I swopped the mains cable, but it still had no power lights.

Thanks for your help.