Need Help, hdd/motherboard issue

Here's the problem:

The motherboard is a Aopen (I know) AX6BC Slot 1 Motherboard. The hard drive is a IBM DTLA-307015 15GB Hdd.

The motherboard was getting a checksum error on boot. I saw that the jumper for clearing the cmos wasn't even on either setting, it was missing. I replaced it on the "normal setting" pins 1-2. After that i got rid of the checksum error.

That isn't the real problem, however:
I can run autodetect hdd option, and the hard drive will come up as 15gb's, in lba mode. I can let it autodetect upon boot to see 15gb.

As soon as the machine actually boots, the bios status screen shows the hdd as a UDMA 2, 528mb hard drive. If you run fdisk, it shows the hard drive as 504mb, with a 14gb partition.

I've changed ide cables, updated the motherboard bios, tried putting the hdd on the seconday chain. I also changed the cmos battery as well. No luck. I also tried a new wd20gb drive, which was seen as the correct size, in bios and in fdisk.

The hard drive makes some weird noises when the machine is first powered on, and i have not tried it in a newer/other machine to try and duplicate the erroneous hard drive size seen in fdisk/dos/win9-whatever.

Originally this machine came in for trouble with the internet. It would lock up immediately after launching outlook express 6.0, or surfing the net for a few minutes.

I am somewhat confused as to why this is happening, anyone got a good idea about the hdd issue? I can't even tell if the windows problems and the hard drive problems are intertwined.

Chances are the problems are not related. Get a diagnostic tool from the manufacturers website and test the drive. Then I would try an overlay partition if it checks out ok. It is also best to use the most current BIOS available for the MoBo.

Try it out in another computer. If it sees it as 504Mb replace the drive.

You might want to check for viruses too.

u said the hdd was making strange noises which is usually bad and means the drive could be going out. as for the size and partition in fdisk, if u can i would recomend wipeing all partitions and starting fresh with the whole drive in on partition or how ever u prefer.

I agree with the consensus here. go here for a diagnostic utility from <a href="http://www.storage.ibm.com/hdd/support/download.htm" target="_blank">ibm</a> .. run the diagnostic utility. If the drive checks out okay, then the next thing I would do is run a virus check. Its possible a virus could be causing the problems. Good luck!

Not sure about the noises, but if the customer can stand to loose what's on there, delete the partions and run fdisk /mbr. After that, reboot and set the BIOS correctly for the drive. I've seen this a few times, actually. It could always be a bad drive, though, especially if its making weird noises......could be this particular line just sounds kinda weird, anyway?

You answered your own question. A new WD20 was
seen correctly and operated correctly. You have
a bad IBM (aren't most of them) drive. Toss it and
put in a new one. No computer part under a hundred
bucks is worth agonizing over.

Thanks for all of the help guys.
I forgot to mention i had already tested this 15gb ibm drive out on the affected machine, plus on another machine as well.
The drive tests out just fine, is seen as what it is.

I guess it must be a fluke?