[sjoh0341]

Hello,

I have recently bought a new motherboard/cpu bundle to switch from my really old cpu to a faster one. I have a Western Digital Caviar 80gb hard drive, and as before, since my old and new motherboards only support up to 32gb, I have to use the Data Lifeguard Tools (ex EZ-BIOS) provided by WD on their website.

After configuring the hard drive as a primary master, I finally succeeded in loading the Data Lifeguard Tools. This bypassed the bios limitation of 32gb and now it recognizes the full capacity of the hard drive. Partitioning with NTFS was the last step I did before I intalled Windows XP on the first partition.

Now, the problem I have is the following: The Windows XP installer formats, installs and after the reboot I get a "Error Loading OS" message. I have tried removing the CD, changing the BIOS so that the boot order is from the HDD-0 but no use...

Since the installer is finished doing its job, after the reboot shouldn't it directly look for the C: partition of the hard drive? Maybe I have not configured the MBR update properly from the Data Lifeguard Tools, but I don't know... Once I also got the message "NTLDR missing" upon reboot.

I would appreciate ANY suggestions on how to fix this. I am almost there (the bios has been "overwitten" to see the full 80gb) but I cannot go through this last problem.

Thanks, Vasileios.

 

[GreyBoy]

You can use a 98 boot disk and fdisk to see if the partition is set to "active". I had this happen to me once with an NTFS partition/XP install. Fdisk will let you set the NTFS partition to "active", if that is the problem.

 

[sjoh0341]

Thanks - I will try that and get back to you in a while...

Vasileios.

 

[sjoh0341]

no, unfortunately I get the same error message: "Error Loading OS".

The partition was already active, by the way...

Do you think it has to do with the jumpers? The BIOS recognizes the HDD as Primary Master, but I am just saying....

 

[idtent]

You must boot the partition first.

If the ez-bios does not load first, then you will ruin the partition table by formatting from a xp cd boot.

Usually when the ezbios loads, it says Press Spacebar to boot from floppy.... or something similiar. Do not have the cd in the drive, redo the format. Let ezbios format for you.

After you let ezbios message come up. Press the key combo, then insert bootable floppy or if ez-bios lets you choose cd, then do that. The Overlay must load first!!!! After that you should be ok.

Right now, You need to format again, only after the overlay has booted.

 

[sjoh0341]

EZ-bios problem SOLVED

Hello idtent,

I managed to solve the problem. I want to specifically thank you for your explicit advice - very helpful indeed. You saved me 50gb of space!

Basically, the overlay HAS to take over after the partitioning+formatting of the drive. If you try to re-format through the windowsXP cd then everything the overlay did is destroyed. So, to summarize, here is the order in which I suggest people do this:

1/ Download the Data Lifeguard Tools from the Western Digital website
2/ Create the bootable floppy.
3/ Turn on the machine with the floppy being one of the BIOS-defined boot devices
4/ The utility lets you format and partition the disk. Let it do the job.
5/ There is another sub-utility that explicitly lets you choose the full size of the disk. Make sure this sets the required size properly.
6/ Exit utility, remove floppy when prompted.
7/ Reboot. Blue little screen saying something "Dynamic Data Overlay" takes over.
8/ Press key (space for floppy boot, C for CDROM boot)
9/ Install O.S. WITHOUT reformatting. This is very important.
10/ Done. Evertime you boot the DDO will take over and if you do not press anything it will do its job.

Thanks guys!
Vasileios.