Two Simple 'Ish Issues

rdfcpete · 10 Sep 2006 at 23:49

Hey guys,

Got two strange, yet im sure simple issues with my new rig [See bottom of first page]

1 - On boot up, I receive the following message which really, really slows down bootup just after the mobo and processor boot details:
'PXE-E61: Media test failed Check cable' [Followed by a second message that I havent caught yet, but its along the words of 'will boot without changes' then the boot continues.

2- I have a Samsung 250GB Sata HDD [again, see thread], however windows is telling me its a 127gb one?

What on earth is going on there?
I've installed XP SP2 also, if that helps?

Both fairly urgent.
Thank you chaps :cool:

Pete.

Joe42 · 10 Sep 2006 at 23:54

rdfcpete said:
1 - On boot up, I receive the following message which really, really slows down bootup just after the mobo and processor boot details:
'PXE-E61: Media test failed Check cable' [Followed by a second message that I havent caught yet, but its along the words of 'will boot without changes' then the boot continues.

Its trying to network boot. Go into the bios and disable network boot or change the boot order so hdd is first and the rest are disabled.

2- I have a Samsung 250GB Sata HDD [again, see thread], however windows is telling me its a 127gb one? What on earth is going on there?
I've installed XP SP2 also, if that helps?

There was a problem with win 2000 where it would only recognise 127gb and needed a patch to recognise more. Never heard of or had that problem with xp. :confused:

Gas Panic! · 10 Sep 2006 at 23:55

http://www.nocrash.com/ncbbs/msgs/3247.shtml <- Might be worth a read.

After a quick skim through, I'd:

- Update BIOS
- Check hardware connections
- Make sure you're not trying to boot from a network device

The above three seemed to be the main culprits in the thread, but there were others- so it's worth a read.

rdfcpete · 12 Sep 2006 at 03:10

Thanks, Yeah the boot issue is sorted, was trying to boot via some NVidia network agent carp.

However, the HDD issue is a real deal atm.
Still says 127GB only, yet Bios recognises correctly 250Gb Sata

I would really love not to have to reformat again, but what can be done?
Got Sp2 installed and on all the links I could find, this said that it would resolve the problem

Cheers chaps,

Pete.

noxidjkram@hotm · 12 Sep 2006 at 07:29

Have a look at it in Disk Management, see if you have a 127GB partition followed by unallocated space?

M

rdfcpete · 12 Sep 2006 at 13:08

Yeah, when I first formatted it would only let me have a partition of 130 or so and there was a second 8mb partition just for the installer files, or something similar.

Yet now, Bios clearly says its 250GB and its ok there, just need to make Windows realise

noxidjkram@hotm · 12 Sep 2006 at 13:46

Right-click My Computer, Choose Manage, and then Disk Management.

See what shows up on your disk here.

M

pastymuncher · 12 Sep 2006 at 14:18

I have a similar problem with my hdd's but not to the same extent as yours. I have a pair of 160gb sata 2 drives that only show up as 131062mb each so someones answer might help me out there as well. I tried to find a solution but gave up in the end and decided to live with it. Still bloody annoying losing 60gb of disk space though.

Edit- Just tried the tip above and mine shows each drive to have 24.67gb unallocated. How can i get this back without reinstalling? Not that there was anyway to see the missing 24.67gb when i set the drives up to install windows.

rdfcpete · 13 Sep 2006 at 01:45

Yeah its there, thanks guys.

Creating a new partition in Disk M'ngmt as we speak. Was a whole 100gig sitting there doing nothing.

Strange how its 127 then 100, not 100 and 150 or there abouts, is that right that i've lost 23 gig, or at least windows is telling me that?

Thanks,

Pete.

ns400r · 13 Sep 2006 at 02:11

Whatever you used to create the first partition and format it had a 127Gb limitation so that's all it created. As I remember, XP SP0 also had this limit. The rest was left unallocated. The 23Gb you've lost is used during the format process. Using something like Partition Magic you could join the 2 partitions you now have into 1 larger one.

Corasik · 13 Sep 2006 at 02:26

You havent 'lost' 23 gig.

Hard disk manufacturers always quote gig as 1,000,000k, but windows more accuratly considers a gig as 1,048,576k. So you would normally expect a '250 gig' hard drive to give around 238gig of space.

Part of the comes back from the legacy days of MFM/RLL hard disks, where the end user actually formatted the disks, and the drive makers quoted 'unformatted capacity'. These days though its just a cheat to make the numbers bigger.

http://www.seagate.com/products/discselect/glossary/index.html#cap said:
Capacity:
Capacity is the amount of data that the drive can store, after formatting. Most disc drive companies, including Seagate, calculate disc capacity based on the assumption that 1 megabyte = 1000 kilobytes and 1 gigabyte=1000 megabytes