I inheritd a PC w/out harddrive....?

Question

...I installd new 1 & recovery discs but get error "cant determine partition setting"HELP!
Ah... see there was more room to type. As I said before in a caveman condensed sort of way, I installed a new harddrive on an inherited PC and bought the recovery discs, but when installing the recovery discs I get the error:"Cannot determine partition settings". I tried to look for a program online or some info on how to setup the partitions to avoid the error during recovery. Does anyone have any suggestions? It's a Sony VAIO desktop P4, with XP Home edition. I would hate to waste it, my kids could get use out of it. Thanks in advance!!!

Answer 1

my SONY vaio desktop is making a clicking noise and the blue screen comes up and reads theres a threading error has been detected, restart the computor and operate in safe mode by pressing f8 to start. Dose this mean my harddrive is failing or something eles that can contribute to this madness please help me with this problem. It just started on friday and its annoying and a pain is the___!!!!!!. Its a sony VGC-V517G. What else can a clicking sound can be other than the hard drive failing?

Answer 2

I inherited an HP pavilion 7905 from my brother without a hard drive; I ordered restore disks from restoredisks.com because hp said they stopped making them for this model. I got the disks, put in a 20 GB hard drive that was bought quite awhile ago but has never been opened until today. I put the hard drive in, put the first recovery CD in and just as the cd-rom starts to spin up it shows a message "Error! PC system not supported. " I have been working on this thing forever, keep in mind I am not all too computer savvy. And so today I called restoredisks.com about it and they said that the problem could be caused by the fact that this hard drive I put in it is smaller than what was originally put in it. Is there any truth to this?



Also I was trying out this 20 GB hard drive to see if I could install XP on this computer in the first place to see first if this computer works at all so then I might be able to save myself from paying $70 for a hard drive that I can't use. If anyone can help me out here or has any thoughts on the matter that would be awesome. Thanks.



Here are the stats of the computer.



Phoenix BIOS 4.0 Release 6.0.E

Copyright 1985 - 2001 Phoenix Technologies Ltd.

All Rights Reserved



Copyright 2001 by Hewlett Packard Company

Release 3.08

CPU= AMD Athlon(tm) 1333mhz

256M System RAM Passed

256k Cache SRAM Passed

System BIOS Shadowed

Video BIOS Shadowed

UMB upper limit segment address: E61B

Mouse initialized

Fixed Disk 0: Maxtor 91024U4

ATAPI CD-ROM: Hewlett-Packard CD-Writer cd 16f

ATAPI CD-ROM: Toshiba DVD-ROM SD-M1502



Here are the stats of the hard drive, I don't know if this information is imortant or not but I just thought I would throw it in there.



Maxtor

Model: 52049H3

HDA: 13A

PCBA: 05A

Unique: 11A

Code: JAC61HUO

Cylinders: 16383

Heads: 16

Sectors 63

Jumper: j50

Master/single: On

Slave: off

7200 PRM

Answer 3

My mother isn't tech savvy and had a few errors with it not wanting to boot up. As sony didn't include the windows XP disk (or even a simple recovery disk) she decided to buy a new system outright. So I inherited it.



I tried installing my main HD from my other PC into it, but it wouldn't recognize it at all unless it was as a slave. I hooked the vaio's HD to my PC and took the essential files that were to be saved from it (music, pictures, etc...) and then formatted it.



The vaio would then recognize my main HD as well as the stock one. I then tried to boot up with it, and was caught in an endless reboot cycle. I tried booting in safe mode and it wouldn't boot. It would come up with : "pres ESC to cancel loading SPTD.sys". Even if canceled it would reboot. I renamed the file and tried, still in the cycle. I put it back and tried disabling auto restart on system failure and got a stop error:



stop: 0x0000007B (0xF894D528, 0xC0000034, 0x00000000, 0x00000000)



I tried doing a few searched through google and got a bunch of jargon I couldn't keep up with. My hard drive still boots properly on my main system, but not in the vaio.



So my question is: How do I get it to boot properly on the vaio without an XP disc? Can I fix this with a simple recovery disk? Or do I need to do something more drastic?

Answer 4

Upgrading your old hard drive

----------------------------

If you are simply replacing your current hard drive with a bigger drive then it is very straight forward.



It is sometimes easier to remove the IDE cable and the power cable (labeled A and B in fig 1.1) before you remove the fixing screws (see fig 1.1), as sometimes the cables can be stubborn.



Note where the cables go, all IDE hard drives have the same standard socket types and the IDE cable should have an alignment notch to ensure it is inserted the right way (see fig 1.2), likewise the power cable will only plug in one way.



After removing the fixing screws (there are four, two on each side of the chassis) gently take the drive out of the chassis and put it to one side.



Next take your new drive and ensure that the jumper settings are set to master or single drive (see fig 1.2), the jumper settings should be displayed on the hard drive or in the manufacturer's book.



Now gently slide the drive into position (where the old drive was) and line up the holes and insert the 4 fixing screws.



Plug the IDE and power cables in (see fig 1.2) and then move onto finishing installation.



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Installing or adding a new hard drive

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note: Disconnect the power and remove your PC's cover, see our guide.



Installing or adding a new hard drive

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note: Disconnect the power and remove your PC's cover, see our guide.

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The first thing to do (after removing the case covers) is to locate the drive bay where the hard drive will go (see fig 1.3 below).







In our example in fig 1.3 above we have a drive already in the bay so you can see more clearly where it should be situated, we don't have a floppy drive installed but if we did then it would be located in one of the free bays above the hard drive.



If you are adding a second drive then try and leave a gap between the two drives for ventilation (although this might not always be possible).

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Jumper Settings



Jumpers are metal pins that have small black plastic sleeves that slot on them, they are used to configure certain devices including hard drives.



For the location of the jumper selector see fig 1.5, the jumper settings should be displayed on the hard drive or in the manufacturer's book.



Single Drive - If this is your only hard drive then set the jumper selector to master



Two Drives - if the new drive will be the main drive, set the jumper to master, if you want it as a secondary drive then set it to slave, alternatively you could use a separate IDE cable on the motherboard's secondary IDE interface (see motherboard manual).



Once you have set the jumper, gently slide the drive into the drive bay, line up the holes (2 on each side of the drive bay) and insert the 4 fixing screws (should have been supplied with your case).



The next step is to attach the IDE and power cables.



In fig 1.4 below you can see a standard IDE Cable, note there are 3 connections (notice the difference in distance between the connectors), connection A plugs into the motherboard and then the slave and master connections are used for IDE devices such as hard drives, if you are only installing one drive or the new drive is to be the master then use the master connector, if the drive is to be the slave then use the slave connector.



The IDE cable will be marked down one side with a red or black strip, this denotes Pin 1, match this with the Pin 1 indicator on the back of the hard drive.



The power cable you will find in your case attached to your power supply, you can see an example below in fig 1.5







Plug the IDE and power cables in (see fig 1.5) and then move onto finishing installation.



Finishing Installation

--------------------



Double check all connections and make sure the device is set correctly as master or slave, also make sure you haven't loosened any connections while you have been installing.



You may wish to make sure the hard drive is correctly installed before replacing the covers, but it is advisable to replace the covers before reconnecting the mains.



When you reboot your machine the bios should automatically detect the new hard drive, then when your operating system (windows or other) has loaded, go to My Computer (or similar) and you should see your new drive there. The letter assigned to the drive will depend on your machine's configuration.



If your drive is the only drive then you will need to install an operating system (if none present).

Answer 5

i think you need xp disk it formats it but think you should find place to help you they can clean insides install windows tell you if needs fan or if you have the right drive and for cheap you could give it memory 2 gig for like 50 maybe go for 4 total soundcard for better sound for like 29 dollars for sound blaster i did this on my xp p4 pc it helped alot also got 1000 gig hd and genius pen tablet with cost of 2 gig mem and sound blaster pen tablet and free fan and hd i spent 300 dollars and i am very happy with it i went to central computer not sure where you are but like try phone book ask how much to look at it then talk about other a stuff

after you get it done you might want it the kid can play tv games have fun and good luck bub101

Answer 6

When you install a new hard drive it has nothing on it.

So you must start with either an operating system disk, like Windows XP,

or with an image of a completely working hard disk.



Most recovery disks expect the hard drive to be partitioned and formatted and to have the old operating system on it.

Answer 7

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Answer 8

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