I messed something up (using canned air the culprit?)

[ski]

I made 2 changes to my system:

1) Cleaned out the dust with canned air. In parts, it condensed, but it dried.
2) Took out the failed Windows hard drive and put in a new 200gb one.

The danged thing is slow as a snail on bootup, and trying to install windows, it just stalls when you "Press ENTER to continue".

I'm wondering if it's possible for canned air to mess something up.

I guess I'll just take out the TV and sound card, unplug every drive except the new 200gb and the DVD-RW drive, and try... :eek:

[navyones]

If the TV and sound card weren't causing a problem before you upgraded, then I doubt they are the culprits.

The only way canned air would cause a problem is if conductive material got blown into a bad area. I am sure that you took care, when using the canned air; so I doubt that is the problem.

I would start from scratch. Take out the new hard drive and use a known good hard drive. Reduce the possible causes for your problem methodically.

[ski]

I would start from scratch. Take out the new hard drive and use a known good hard drive. Reduce the possible causes for your problem methodically.
It's always so tempting to pop in the new drive and expect it all to work :boxing:

I have one hard drive, one CD-RW connected, and it's working!

The 200GB only showed up as 137GB and a 55GB empty partition, and while I looked up a few sites:
http://www.ozzu.com/ftopic38505.html
http://www.mcse.ms/message1582494.html

... I can't figure it out. I patched to SP1. Maybe it's mobo BIOS, but I'm scared to do it :heh:

Thanks for the reality check navyones, I'll see what happens when I add my other 2 hard drives and DVD burner.

[Kevster]

It is very likely your bios. You may need to do a flash upgrade on it. It's not as scary as it may seem, but you should keep a record of all your settings BEFORE you perform the bios upgrade (that is, if there is a newer one available that will fix your problem).

[Hiro]

And Kevster beat me to it.

Too commonly now a days Hard Drives are growing bigger and bigger in capacity, however, the motherboards we want to connect them too just aren't able to see numbers that high. Unless of course the BIOS can be upgraded to a more scalable one.

I'd start there personally.

[ski]

Any foreseeable problems down the road by having that 130GB OS partition and the 55GB data partition?

[GilbertsGrape]

Any foreseeable problems down the road by having that 130GB OS partition and the 55GB data partition?


I yould flip flop those numbers. you will need way more data storage than os room.

I have a 40 gb OS HD and a 120GB data Storage HD for MP3's and riping DVD's

Also if you are still having problems with it running slow i would reseat all cards and double check that all cables are installed good. also are your drives set ti CS cable select?

[ski]

I yould flip flop those numbers. you will need way more data storage than os room.

I have a 40 gb OS HD and a 120GB data Storage HD for MP3's and riping DVD's

Also if you are still having problems with it running slow i would reseat all cards and double check that all cables are installed good. also are your drives set ti CS cable select?
Crap, is there any way to do it on the fly, without having to reinstall Windows? I have Partition Magic 8 laying around from many years ago...

[Kevster]

Partition magic should be able to take care of that for you. It might take a while though considering the sizes of the partitions involved (and the data that has to be moved).