ok i finally got my computer working again and now i have encountered another problem. I have a 100GB maxtor HD, it is not partitioned but the C: drive which is the maxtor says the capacity is only 5.99 GB. What can I do to realize the full potential of the maxtor? is there something i can go into to partition the disk into more drives or will it even recognize that that space is there or will it try to partition the 5.99 GB that is all it sees. please help thanks

Make a boot disk and copy fdisk and format to the floppy. Boot from the floppy and type in fdisk. If the space available under fdisk is not 100GB you will need a BIOS upgrade.

Fdisk help http://fdisk.radified.com/ http://www.compguystechweb.com/troubleshooting/fdisk/index.html http://members.bellatlantic.net/~mrscary/fdisk.htm http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/Q255/8/67.ASP

I'm a little confused. Is it the BIOS that's saying that you hard drive is only 6 gigs? or is it fdisk or Windows saying that? 6 gigs is not a normal BIOS limitation (~8 gigs is). If fdisk or windows is saying this, the problem is the drive isn't partitioned/formatted properly.

I should have said if ONLY fdisk or windows is saying this, and your BIOS recognizes the full 100 gigs, then the problem is with the partitions/format.

It sounds like you may need an overlay program. The drive should have included a Maxblast floppy that takes care of several problems like this. If not, you can download it from the Maxtor site.