blowing my mind!!!

Trying to help a neighbor here. This is an older AT 'puter with a totally fouled up system. Trying to do a clean install and I can not get it to recognize the correct size HD. I set everything right in bios, enter fdisk and it sees the 8.4 drive, fdisk with one partition, reboot to format and only 528mb is seen. Bios is set to auto detect, LBA. Does the same when set to normal. Bios does see it as 8.4 when setting it up but on reboot it is 528mb.I have done a low level format with maxtors utilities as at one point setup showed bad sectors. Maxtors utilities says the drive is ok now. Is this virus, they were not practicing safe computing at all but as I said I did the lowlevel format, (wouldn't that remove any no-no's they might have had). A floppy from there 'puter did come up as infected with junkie boot virus when I was making a fresh start disk to try and straighten this out. Where do I go now guys and gals!

Is this the same HDD that was running in the PC before? It almost sounds like the System BIOS would either need to be updated (go to the manufactures web site), or the BIOS will never see that 8 GIG as it is. That would require drive overlay software to fool the drive past the Motherboard. Maxtor should offer it on the web site...

yes it is the same hard drive that was there working proper some time ago. As I said bios sees it ok, save to cmos then reboot and all is screwed up! Could it be battery? Or wouldn't that effect a reboot versus a cold start?

for starters, try another battery and IDE cable. If it still does the same thing, take the drive oput and try it in another system. If it works fine in another system, then it probably a bad MBD.

Which os are you installing 95 or 98? I seem to remember that 95 used fat16 which should be able to see at least 2GB but it's a start. Also I would go to the HD manufacturers website and download the format utility that they have (i.e. ezdisk, etc) Then try to install windows.

I am trying to install win 98, (same as what was on here), and wouldn't the fact that auto-select sees the 8.4 gig drive mean the board supports an 8.4 gig drive? Hadn't considered the ribbon cable though, thats my next try. Also after fdisk and format, with the 528mb showing I tried to install windows and it stops near the end of copying the cab files and says "You have interupted the file copy". But I didn't!....honest I didn't touch it! I also tried copying to the hard drive to install from there with the same result...stops at cab file 61 each time even when I tell it to overwrite all.

ok now this is gettin real fun!!! I replaced the cable and no change. While rummaging for a cable I realized I have this old 2 gig drive with win95 already on it from a different 'puter so i pull the 8.4 and put in the 2 gig. She posts, starts up windows and of course finds different hardware does its searches and i let it for the most part but not giving it the new modem drivers or etheret card cause this is only a test. So I restart it after it has found things and then it says it needs to restart again. Now on restart it comes up invalid system disk! I started it with the win98 start disk, change to c: drive and type in dir and the screen on the left side is all unreadable, like some heart, club, spade shapes arrows and all sorts of cute little things rather then the typical command.com scandisk etc.!

Of your last two posts....

1) I have seen a number of "transition" boards that did autodetect the full capacity of a larger drive but still needed the Mfg Overlay to work.

2) The extended characters could be caused by a corrupt overlay (perhaps that 2Gb had been used on an older system that only had native support for 504Mb...) a damaged MBR, or a virus.

Your smartest bet is probably to strip the drives down clean (used a low-level formatter provided by the mfg.) and start over. If the 8Gb isn't properly seen with fdisk, then go ahead and try the overlay....

ok this must be virus. I took my 2 gig drive out of the "sick" system, placed it in a working system, and it now is not even recognized by bios and will not start and when I slave it to the working system it will go no further then posting. How do I clean a drive that I can't even access? Also it appears there is a bios virus in the other board how do I clean that. Note: prior to putting the 2 gig drive in the "sick" puter it did function as a slave drive just fine. And yes I did check I have set jumpers correct. If I can fix this then I can handle the 8.4 gig drive, lol.

never seen or heard of a virus that resides in the nsystem bios.it sounds like there is a problem with the MBD thats in the system. Like Sowulo said, low level the drive fith the mfg's utility. If possible, try installing a promise card (hdd controller card) and see if the drive functions properly on it.

One last thing to try, a different powersupply. I know, probably has nothing to do with it, but I have seen a few systems with strange problems fixed by replacing the flakey powersupply.

If the drives have been scrambled by being used with a m/board with a damaged BIOS, I would suggest low level formatting both drives in a known good system which has hardware flash prevention (a jumper to disable flashing the BIOS) just in case it was a BIOS flashing virus. DON'T auto-detect the drives, type in the CHS values manually. Auto detecting the drive parameters with a damaged BIOS could be the cause of all the problems.

If the cause is a damaged BIOS, whether it was done by a virus or just a chip failure is another question. Maybe try flashing the board with a new BIOS, using a flashing program, even if the BIOS has it's own built-in flashing utility, as that could be damaged too. If the update won't take, the EEPROM chip is probably faulty.

think i finally got it. Platypus you are right on! Bios is bad and got worse! I don't know if it was virus, (never got a system running long enough to load a virus scan on it) but I tried to flash the bios and unfortunately it failed. Totally dead now, very odd looking attempts at posting, sometimes half of a normal post screen, other times multy color motion design, or just yellow. Gonna try to get another board with a good bios or just scrap this. I was able to determine it is a Pcchips board m585lmr. First experience with a pcchips board and I have read nothin' but bad here on them so guess you are all right about them!