Need help with formatting a computer. Please, please, please.

robdutchmonkey said:
Team Alberton, ASSEMBLE! *add superhero jingle here* :p

I was actually just thinking something here, I had an old 250gb slim seagate that absolutely refused to allow any OS to be installed. It worked and still is working perfectly but would never ever show up whilst running a new installation of windows.

If, at the end of the day, the situation is such as I had above. Why not connect the old hdd to another pc and transfer anything you want saved onto another drive, and then just run a clean installation on that drive and use the 1TB purely for data/backups. That is if you can get that far with installing windows that you can select the drive. I also have an external dvd writer in case it might be the writer which you say it isn't

I made the mistake of using a 1TB hdd as my OS drive and in all fairness it's a waste. Reason being I constantly have at least 350gb free (even though I store about 450gb of music on it) because I don't store any vital things on my C drive due to it being most likely to crash/get a virus.
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Maybe. I went to my buddy to check if it is picked up on his PC, but I didn't check if I can load windows on at his place. Gonna go there tonight and see.

Maybe I should move all my stuff from my current drive (500Gb) to the 1 TB and use the 500 as my main drive. the problem is I want only one drive in the computer. Kinda defeats the object of me buying the 1 TB.
 
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Ronjay said:
Maybe. I went to my buddy to check if it is picked up on his PC, but I didn't check if I can load windows on at his place. Gonna go there tonight and see.

Maybe I should move all my stuff from my current drive (500Gb) to the 1 TB and use the 500 as my main drive. the problem is I want only one drive in the computer. Kinda defeats the object of me buying the 1 TB.
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Nah, having two drives rocks! Use the faster one for the OS drive, and then the rest for storage. Then you will have 1.5 TB!
 
Garyvdh said:
Nah, having two drives rocks! Use the faster one for the OS drive, and then the rest for storage. Then you will have 1.5 TB!
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I see, it's just that my case is a bit small and I also have a problem with air flow. But if you say that it's better with the two drives in then I'll do that rather. Maybe I'll buy a big fan for my case for the air flow problem. I'll try loading windows on the 500 and let you guys know what happened.
 
Ronjay said:
I see, it's just that my case is a bit small and I also have a problem with air flow. But if you say that it's better with the two drives in then I'll do that rather. Maybe I'll buy a big fan for my case for the air flow problem. I'll try loading windows on the 500 and let you guys know what happened.
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Isn't Windows already on the 500GB? If not you're going to have the same issue because you need to boot from your CD drive either way.
 
For what it's worth, try checking the BIOS to see if you haven't set the SATA controller to AHCI, RAID or something else. I've had some bizarre problems like that in the past where switching to native SATA over IDE emulation causes the optical drive to refuse to pick up. Also, is the DVD drive SATA or IDE based?
 
Rodent-Boy said:
Isn't Windows already on the 500GB? If not you're going to have the same issue because you need to boot from your CD drive either way.
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No, my installation of windows is on a 80GB, pretty pathetic as you can imagine. And yeah, I tried to install windows on it and it's doing the same thing.
 
Asha'man X said:
For what it's worth, try checking the BIOS to see if you haven't set the SATA controller to AHCI, RAID or something else. I've had some bizarre problems like that in the past where switching to native SATA over IDE emulation causes the optical drive to refuse to pick up. Also, is the DVD drive SATA or IDE based?
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Thanks. it's a SATA DVD. I'll check the settings.
 
Right, tried to do something else but nothing is working, and now my Graphics Card has blown. I just want to cry. I've got a new HDD I can't use, a HDD that I can't format, my GC has burned out and I'm really depressed.
 
How did the Graphics card blow?

Listen, maybe you should take a break for a day or so. Then try again. Rebuild the system from scratch again. or bring it to one of us.

Can you get hold of a copy of Hiren's Boot CD? From one of us?

If you boot from Hiren's I am 90% you can fix the MBR by using Ranish or something like that.
 
Garyvdh said:
How did the Graphics card blow?

Listen, maybe you should take a break for a day or so. Then try again. Rebuild the system from scratch again. or bring it to one of us.

Can you get hold of a copy of Hiren's Boot CD? From one of us?

If you boot from Hiren's I am 90% you can fix the MBR by using Ranish or something like that.
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As I said, my case is not the nicest case in the world. Was having overheating issues from the GC to begin with. That's why I bought the 1TB drive to try and improve the airflow in the case to hopefully keep the GC cooler. Anyway, I hadn't even touched the case this morning when I started picking up problems, The PC would just die and then not switch on for a few minutes while the card would cool down. So I decided to take the card out, but I hate fiddling to much inside the case so I decide to try putting an extra fan instead which was working for all of ten minutes longer then before, I'm an idiot, because I should have just taken the card out. The next thing I know, there's a bang and a terrible smell and my computer is dead. Pull the card out and it's working again but I'm sitting with out a card. AAARGH, Should've just pulled the card and waited until I've sorted out a better case.

I'll try to get a copy of Hiren's, and yeah, I'm not touching the thing for another couple of day's.
 
Right, got to load widows onto the HDD. It turned out to be my DVDRam which is the problem. Got an older IDE dvdrom from a friend and the problem is gone. Just pressed F11 selected the drive and BOOM it's working. Thanks gent's for helping me.

But now I've got another problem, I need a new Graphics card. I've managed to get a R1 000 together so that's my budget. Which card should I go for. Basically best bang for buck. And where from. Thanks again.
 
Fantastic to hear u r sorted. Not the best person for advice on a gfx card.
 
Ronjay said:
Right, got to load widows onto the HDD. It turned out to be my DVDRam which is the problem. Got an older IDE dvdrom from a friend and the problem is gone. Just pressed F11 selected the drive and BOOM it's working. Thanks gent's for helping me.

But now I've got another problem, I need a new Graphics card. I've managed to get a R1 000 together so that's my budget. Which card should I go for. Basically best bang for buck. And where from. Thanks again.
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Just go to Matrix or somewhere and ask them to give you the best card for a grand. In that price range it is not going to make much difference anyway.
 
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