🔒 Locked

Problem Installing Windows

Started by Jabus10 Aug 19, 2006 at 2:51 AM 2 replies 800+ views

Original Post

Aug 19, 2006 at 2:51 AM

This might not be the right area for this post but here goes. I built my own computer using the guide you get from i think pcmech. I installed red hat linux on it and everything was fine. However i noticed that it sometimes makes this grinding noise. I rarely used this computer and the other day i decided that i wanted to install windows on it. I put the cd in and the first time i did it it would not boot from the cd. I tried again and it then happily told me i had no hard drive (but linux knew there was a harddrive). The third time it decided there was a hard drive but it wasn't going to be able to format it. Then it managed to format it and said that it couldn't copy any of the files over to it. I thought that it couldn't copy any files over because it was dirty so i cleaned the cd. Now it is telling me that i sometimes don't have a harddrive but when i do it won't format it for me. I just wondered if anyone could give me any advice. The computer has 1 gb of RAM and a 60gb Maxtor hardrive from my old computer.

dave

Aug 19, 2006 at 3:12 AM

I think the only way out of this one is to blag a smaller harddrive from somewhere and try that in its place. I it works then its a knackaered HD. It might also be a stick of ram screwing around, so if you have two sticks try them one at a time.

Hope that helps,

Dave

Jabus10

Aug 19, 2006 at 7:21 AM

Its no the ram doing it as i've just tested that. Is there a way to prove its not the hard drive without using another as i don't have another hard drive thats not in use. Would the harddrive be knackered if linux worked on it

Shae

Aug 20, 2006 at 1:17 PM

You could try to install Linux again. By doing so you eliminate problems with windows and your hardware. But to be honest I have a computer with a 60gb Maxtor that sounds to have similar problems, but it is old enough I do not think I will mess with fixing it for now. It would work ok in linux and would not work at all with windows. Why? Because Linux uses a journaling file system thus making crashes not as bad on your OS files. Crashing in windows led to a bad hive in one week.

If I had to guess, if the hard drive keeps getting unrecognized then it is likely a hard drive issue.

How old is your hard drive?

Topic Locked

This topic has been locked by a moderator. New replies are not allowed.