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Ok heres the Issue. My dads Computer is running Windows 98 SE. He has a 4 GB Hard Drive. Well now since we Reinstalled Windows to Fix other problems, his Computer is saying that it only has 580 MB, not even 1 GB. Never in the history of PC's has that been made.
I have already tried FDISK and reinstalling Windows again, and I can't seem to get it fixed,can anyone help?
When you reinstalled did you format the drive? I know it doesn't make sense but when it asked about large disk support did you say yes? What does it say in the bios?
Likely
Practice makes perfect but only if you practice perfectly!
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Yes I did format it twice and I said yes, you have to when you install Windows. The BIOS is normal. So I dont know what else to do. Is there anything even in the BIOS that I could mess with?
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What I meant was if you go into bios does it detect the drive and if so does it show the correct size there?
Likely
Practice makes perfect but only if you practice perfectly!
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It sounds like you had a drive overlay installed before. If the BIOS can't support the 4GB drive then overlays are a way to trick the BIOS into using the entire drive.
The problem with overlays is the drive can't be moved. Another computer will not read it at all.
Watch the POST screens at start up to see if the drive is identified by both the model and the FULL drive capacity.
If the full capacity shows then you may have multiple partitions or unallocated space on the drive.
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"Smacking my own head"
I didn't even think about an overlay.
Likely
Practice makes perfect but only if you practice perfectly!
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Yoiu say you tried fdisk. What does fdisk option 4 say about the drive when booting from a 98 bootdisk?
Some early pentium bios' didn't have support for more than 1024 cylinders which translated to 504/528 meg (binary/decimal). Your 580 meg space doesn't seem to fall in that catagory but are you sure that's the total capacity that shows?
The usual three bios drive options were (I think) Normal, Large Dos, LBA. Try LBA.
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Ok, Well the bios says 580 megs ya, and it is Set to LBA. But the FDISK says there's one partition for like 8500 megs and it is the Primary DOS partition, which translates into a s---load more space that what Windows is reading.
This is so F'n Frustrating....
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Then the drive probably did have an overlay installed. The overlay software MIGHT still be available from the manufacturer of the drive. There are different versions that may or may not be appropriate for your situation.
Check the brand of drive or better still get the exact model off the label.
One other possibility is a limiter jumper may be in place to keep the capacity down. That wouldn't explain how the drive showed as 4GB prior to the format. Are you sure it did?
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OtH... ye gods 'n lil fishes...
That site is still around with that info... Useful to know for future reference on-pass. There was another similar too - but can't recall who, what, where etc...
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I found that site and a couple others researching drive barriers whaile attempting to figure this out but the 580MBs didn't fall into that so like a fool I dismissed them. I wish I could physically see this drive and or system. I have had this problem in different ways but never with this large a discrempency. I put a, I think it was a 15gig drive from a 98se machine in a much older 95 machine and it first wouldn't see it then after some proding I managed to get it to read around 8gigs. Never hit a limit like this though.
Likely
Practice makes perfect but only if you practice perfectly!
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If you can't physically get to the drive, does the model show on the posting screen? Or in device manager?
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Well I thank all of you for all of your Input. In Sheer Frustration/Good idea though, I managed to Compress the Drive to at least get 1 Gig out of it, which is adequete for my dads Computer use, which is pretty basic.
So no more need for input.
Thanks.
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