Topic: help with a computer problem

[Don Karnage]

hello all, someone is in need of help with her computer can someone help here?

no1auntieil <no1auntie@hotmail.com>


I have been fighting my crappy computer for a week trying to install
a new internal hard drive.  I have a Gateway 'puter and Windows ME,
and every single upgrade has been a major pain in the ass (which has
basically consisted of installing new memory cards, but they were
more complicated than they need to be!).

Long story short (kind of), it has taken me 3 1/2 years to fill up
the 10 GB hard drive that came with this hunk of junk (only 9 GB
full, but why wait 'til the last minute?).  I bought a Seagate 80 GB
drive at Best Buy...the guy at the desk assured me that it would be
simple to slave the new drive to the old, copy the old files over,
then remove the old drive (and yes, I have to remove it entirely,
because there's only room for one drive inside the tower case), and
that there would be instructions on how to do all this included with
the new drive.  (At this point, please keep in mind that I'm pretty
sure my TV and microwave operate with some kind of magic - I'm
technically impaired)

There was a fold-out flyer included, but no detailed trouble-shooting
instructions.  I DID manage, after a combined 8 hours over a 2 day
period last weekend to slave the drives together & copy my files
over.  However, now my computer will only start in "safe mode" if the
new drive is hooked up (in any way that I've tried), and will not
give me access to my cd-drive (which I found out when I tried to re-
load the software that came with the damned thing).  I have also
tried pretty much everything in the Windows trouble-shooting
thingamabob that automatically open up when safe mode starts, with no
success whatsoever.
If I try and boot up in "normal mode", I get any one of a number of
Windows error messages (the ones that pop up on a blue screen, and
you can't get rid of unless you turn your computer back off).  I have
tried nearly everything, and have finally removed both the new drive
and the IDE cable that came with it, and reconnected my original
drive - voila! - my computer starts normally, and I now have access
to the internet and my cd-drive again - a temporary solution at best,
however. 

I went to the Seagate tech support pages, but nothing there made ANY
sense to me.  I hesitate to contact their support crew yet, since
they'll talk to me in the same language that everything else was
written in, and I'll feel stupider than I do now, and probably STILL
won't know how to fix the problem

I'm hoping that with over 10,000 members, and several way-smarter-
than-me mods, SOMEBODY will have some suggestions in PLAIN ENGLISH. 
I can't have tried everything, right?

Please help - I bought Superstar over 2 weeks ago, but don't dare
install it until the new drive is working properly.  (whiiiine)

Thanks!   

[Iceman]

It seems to me its just a settings problem. What you COULD try, if you have your WIN ME disc is to re-install windows to just that drive, then copy your files.

Or, you could buy an external enclosure and just slave the 80gb permanently.

Sorry I can't really help with your individual problem. Though you did make sure you set the 80gb as 'master' when you unplugged the first one? There should be a jumper in the back of the HDD for it. (a lil cover for some pins).

[kmelew]

Windows doesn't like to be simply copied over to another drive.  It prefers to be reinstalled.  But of course that can be a pain.

What you may wish to consider creating an "image" of your existing drive then installing the image on the new drive.  A program like this may help.

Good luck!

[The Bar-Abbas Anomaly]

I just fired off an Email to her:


1.    Get two Floppy disks.
2.    Boot your computer on your original HDD without the new one installed.
3.    Go to Start --> Settings --> Control Panel and then double click on 'Add-Remove Programs'.
4.    Click on the third tab across the top which should be called something like 'Make Boot Disk'.
5.    Put the first blank floppy in and make a boot disk.
6.    Put the second floppy in when that's done and copy the Ghost.exe file which is attached to this Email to it.
7.    Shut down your computer.
8.    Check your new drive and make sure it's jumper is set to 'Master' or just as it was when you first took it out of the box.  (the little flier that came with the drive should tell you how to do this.)
9.    Unplug your CD drive's data and power cables and plug them into the new drive.  (this will avoid having to worry about master/slave and whatnot)
10.    Put your boot floppy in the drive and fire up the computer.
11.    At the 'A:' prompt put the second disk in and type GHOST and hit <enter>
12.    Use the arrow keys to navigate around in the Ghost program.  You want to Copy Local Disk to Disk.  Select the 10Gb drive as the source and the 80Gb drive as the destination.  Don't get 'em backwards!  Say 'yes' to do it.
13.    This should do what you need.  When it's done (should take about 30 minutes or less) plug the CD drive back in, plug the new drive in where the old one was and put your case back together.