Need Winblows Install Help... FAST!

K

kevdoggx

Guest
When I get into the windows installation menu the unpartitioned space on the hdd shows up as 131000MB or 131GB, but before it was 286GB which is right since it's a 300GB hdd.

I don't know what's wrong and it's driving me nuts. Can anyone recommend a bootable formatting program to see if that might help...

Any suggestions are welcomed!!

Thanks
 
you must be installing pre-sp1 winxp, or pre sp2 win2k, right? If so, then say hello to the "I can't see anything more than 128 gigs" bug. You'll have to either install it like that, and then just create another partition out of the remaining space once windows is installd, or slipsteam your windows CD to make it all show up from the get-to.
 
Yeah I slipstreamed SP2 and it didn't work right....

I would love to get some help on that if you could!

I followed 3 different walkthroughs and they were all the same so I don't know what the hell I was doing wrong. But when I was using the slipstreamed CD, I was able to see the whole 286GB like I mentioned in the first post. More details in a minute...
 
So when I was using the Slipstreamed CD it was working very slowly and then when it finally got going, it said I needed to install the SP2 cd cuz it needed some files. So I told it to look in D: and it wouldn't work, I don't know what the hell the problem is and it's driving me nuts!
 
This is a good chance for you to follow good practices and stop trying to make your OS volume so huge. Pick something between a 40 GB and an 70 GB partition, create it, and load XP. Once it's finished installing, you can worry about the remaining space, and getting it fixed. You might need to load chipset drivers for your board.
 
Yeah that's what I want to do it just takes so long to install windows I don't want to bother if it's not going to work again.

Thanks for all the help so far guys!
 
Alright going to try to install Windows again, I'll let you guys know how it goes...

Any idea why the slipstream wouldn't work though, it just irks me that it wont!
 
No dice, I get the same thing except it doesn't say anything about the WInXP SP2 cd it just says the WinXP CD. For some reason it's not getting the files that it wants.

And here's the weird thing, when I click browse... Then I type D: for select the cd drive, it says it doesn't exist.

Please help me!!
 
SO do the djnes said. load windows in a smaller partition and then update to sp2 and then expand the partition to include the whole disk if you want..
 
WHEW!

I figured out the problem... Turns out the jumper on my DVD Drive was set to slave and it's the only device on the IDE channel.

One question though, I have been installing windows over and over so I got sick of waiting to do the full NTFS format and did a quick one and this time it worked... Shoud I go back and do one more install to finalize this whole deal or will I be ok as I am?

Thanks again for everything guys!
 
A quick format is fine.

And djnes, why would splitting a disk in two be good practices?
 
Not to butt in, but the reason that I do it is because it makes it easier to reinstall Windows w/o moving your songs, vids, etc when reformatting...
 
kevdoggx said:
WHEW!

I figured out the problem... Turns out the jumper on my DVD Drive was set to slave and it's the only device on the IDE channel.

One question though, I have been installing windows over and over so I got sick of waiting to do the full NTFS format and did a quick one and this time it worked... Shoud I go back and do one more install to finalize this whole deal or will I be ok as I am?

Thanks again for everything guys!
Click to expand...
It's odd that having the dvd's location on the bus would cause such issues...
But then again, the AsRock motherboard in my parent's system seemed to be possessed... I've seem my fair share of random oddities.

As for the question of format, there is no need:
http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=302686

Both format options removed the file system tables, and create a new empty file system on the drive. Full format also checks each sector for disk errors. If you already did one full format, doing another gets you nothing (unless of course the disk is in the process of a complete meltdown and sectors have gone bad since the last full format).
 
Ranma_Sao said:
A quick format is fine.

And djnes, why would splitting a disk in two be good practices?
Click to expand...

I think Djnes point was more along the lines of -- just pick a partition size below 131, and get windows installed and then worry about rest of the drive after they'd managed to update to sp2, since windows wouldnt recoginise the larger size
 
I'm old school I guess, where I never like having super huge system volumes. I thought I had seen a few documents around the time XP was being released that recommended not going over a certain size, but nothing concrete. I've always done it out of simplicity as well. I can keep my data and files separate from the OS and applications. In the event of any corruption, I can Ghost an image of the system partition down, and all of my data is stored separately, so I don't have to back anything up. I don't like using a system that has one drive and one partition. My work laptop has a 20GB drive in it, and I have that partitioned into 2 drives.
 
djnes said:
I'm old school I guess, where I never like having super huge system volumes. I thought I had seen a few documents around the time XP was being released that recommended not going over a certain size, but nothing concrete. I've always done it out of simplicity as well. I can keep my data and files separate from the OS and applications. In the event of any corruption, I can Ghost an image of the system partition down, and all of my data is stored separately, so I don't have to back anything up. I don't like using a system that has one drive and one partition. My work laptop has a 20GB drive in it, and I have that partitioned into 2 drives.
Click to expand...
Well, I do know that everytime a new windows release comes out we have people bitching they can't upgrade cause they made their initial partition to small. ;)
 
Ranma_Sao said:
Well, I do know that everytime a new windows release comes out we have people bitching they can't upgrade cause they made their initial partition to small. ;)
Click to expand...
People are going to bitch at you no matter what. If you sold Longhorn for $250, and it came with a $1000 bill inside, people would still bitch that Micro$soft WinBLOWS sucks. :rolleyes:
 
djnes said:
People are going to bitch at you no matter what. If you sold Longhorn for $250, and it came with a $1000 bill inside, people would still bitch that Micro$soft WinBLOWS sucks. :rolleyes:
Click to expand...

QFT.. ..time to change the sig :D
 
djnes said:
People are going to bitch at you no matter what. If you sold Longhorn for $250, and it came with a $1000 bill inside, people would still bitch that Micro$soft WinBLOWS sucks. :rolleyes:
Click to expand...
True.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top