ComputerBB

hi, im new here i needed some help on my hard drive. There seems to be a problem with it. i just installed a new hard drive and then i installed a new install of windows xp and the hard drive works fine. Then after a couple of days this happens when i turn on my computer and it goes to boot up it says "a disk error press control , alt, del to restart" and that is the furest it goes. Also is this set up right i have my hard drive set up as the primary master and i have the cd rom drive set up as the primary slave drive ..... well hopefully some one can help me with the hard drive problem because it happens like every 4 -5 days. The only thing i can do is re-install windows xp because it does'nt go any further then say a disk error please restart. im running windows xp home edition. thanks for any help/ input

we need more info- do you only have one drive(HDD) and CD-rom? and-are both components hooked to the same IDE connector on the mainboard?

i only have one hard drive and one cd rom drive. An also yes both components are hooked to the same IDE connector on the mainboard

If you have one cable, the CD must be set up as slave. If you have a secondary IDE connector on the motherboard then put the CD on the secondary channel, get a second ribbon cable, and set up as master. By putting the CD on the same cable as the hard drive you slow down the data transfer. The BIOS should see the CD on the secondary, but if not you will have to go into the BIOS and enable it. If you still have problems with the drives on different cables then you may have a bad hard drive. If you don’t have a secondary IDE connector on the M/B try disconnecting the CD drive check the connector to the drive, make sure it’s connected good then boot up. See if you get a drive error, if yes then possible bad drive, if no, reconnect CD and reboot.

Try using fdisk if it is a brand new drive and create primary and logical partitions. You will need to create a partition first and then format it.