My Hdd Disappeared!

I recently bought a 160GB Maxtor IDE drive to try to revive an old 486 desktop I had built for me years ago. The last O/S run on it was XP Pro. It couldn't be upgraded to Win 7, so I put it aside. The old HDD would not boot, nor could I reinstall XP, so I bought the Maxtor. I attempted an install of XP Pro from the original CD, and it stalled at 33%. I had to restart to get out of the install. The XP install would not start again. I used the "Nuke" program on Hiren's boot CD to get rid of the failed install, and now the computer doesn't see it at all. Is there anything in the way of a bootable utility I can use to remedy this? Another way to make it visible again?

 

Did you mean 160MB? Are you sure you meant 486? I'm pretty sure WinXP couldn't run on a 486. I'm also pretty sure a 486 computer couldn't hold a 160GB hard drive.

 

I did, in fact, mean GB. I'm positive it is a 486 because I had it built for me by a local computer shop for use in my business at the time. It was a 320GB master drive I removed from it, which I used until I retired the machine. (It did not have the architecture needed to run Windows 7.) And it was running XP Pro just fine. (It actually began its life as a DOS machine!) I just did a bit of research, and drive size limits are dependent on BIOS and controller. Some early 486's were quite limited. I don't recall having to jump through any hoops to make the original 40GB drive into a slave when I added the 320 as master, either. In any case, I'm still trying to partition, format, and install XP on the new 160GB drive. I made some progress with Hiren's Boot CD, and XP is running format on it as I write this. (I'd convert the darned thing to Linux if I didn't already have an older laptop running it.)

 

I recall there was a tool from Maxtor (MaxBlast), that would make "large" drives work in older OSes / BIOS.
Yeah, if you wipe the disk you have to partition and format them sometimes for the OS to see them.

 

Wow! Great suggestion. The system booted to it, and I partitioned and formatted the HDD. Here's a new wrinkle: I got "NTLDR missing" error when attempting to boot to the Win XP Pro install disk. I'm working on figuring that out now. MaxBlast is an impressive program; worked like a charm!

 

Huh! I'm confused. I got the bright idea to use Hiren's Boot CD. The Fix Missing NTLDR program did not work. I even tried an .iso I made from Dell for XP, and that doesn't work either. Same error.

 

Sure it is booting from the CD? You got into Hiren's menu? It sounds like it is not booting from the CD then looking at the drive...
Are you selecting boot for the BIOS menu - does it have the 'hit any key to boot..." messages when you're starting up?

 

Yikes! That's a lotta questions (LOL). I'm looking at Hiren's menu as I write this, so yes, it booted from the CD. It can't do otherwise yet as I can't install an O/S. As far as the BIOS menu, after the power-on self-test, I can enter BIOS by hitting the Del key. I already configured the CD-RW as the first boot device. As I said, I can select any item on Hiren's menu. I thought "Fix NTLDR is missing" was going to enable me to finally install an O/S, but apparently not. I need to grok this a bit more, but I've got a lengthy list of more pressing chores to do today and may not be able to get back to it.