Member Avatar for MPelham

Well, you guys are going to hate me.

I've got two computers that need repairs (I'm the tech guy home from college and family expects it to be done).

One is an HP, almost-legacy age (5-6) years and on boot-up, does not recognize the hard-drive, I'm not sure if master or slave settings are incorrect, but I will need to double check that. Assuming they are, shouldn't bios automatically detect the hard-drive? The drive in question is a Seagate Barracuda, 80gb with 7200 rpm.

The second one is an IBuyPower.com product, about 2-3 years old. When I returned home, the original hard-drive was completely fried. I purchased a new hard-drive for this, an 80 gb Seagate Barracuda, 7200 rpm, IDE/ATA (not knowing that this was in the other computer, I assure you). On copying the Windows XP installation files, I get tons of "File cannot be Found" errors, seemingly randomly popping up. It may be due to a bad CD/DVD ROM drive, but I am unsure what to do.

Thank you for any and all your help, have a good night.

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A short, practical diagnostic plan that expands on ’s symptoms and ’s comments: treat the two machines as separate problems (drive not seen at BIOS vs. random “file cannot be found” during XP setup) and follow inexpensive, non-destructive tests first, then escalate to hardware swaps.

For the HP that doesn’t enumerate the Seagate: attach the suspect drive to a different controller (anotherIDE/SATA machine or a USB-to-IDE adapter) and run a vendor diagnostic so the drive’s electronics and SMART can be read. Seagate’s SeaTools (bootable or Windows version) will report SMART attributes and run short/long self‑tests that quickly distinguish firmware/electronics failure from a controller or cable issue. (seagate.com)

For the iBuyPower machine showing random copy errors during Windows setup: bad RAM is a common, easy-to-miss cause of random “file not found” or corrupted-copy errors during OS installs. Run a full memory test (MemTest86; allow several complete passes) and test modules one at a time if any errors appear. If RAM tests clean, treat the install media next: verify the ISO checksum or use a known-good retail XP disc (or create a USB installer) and burn at the slowest reliable speed to avoid burn-related corruption. (memtest86.com)

During GUI-mode setup it is possible to open a command prompt (Shift+F10) and inspect the setup logs (Setupact.log and Setuperr.log) to see exact filenames and error codes created by Setup; these logs are written to the Windows folder (or the temporary $WIN_NT$.~BT area while copying). From the setup command prompt the logs can be viewed with simple commands, for example:

type C:\Windows\setupact.log | more
type C:\Windows\setuperr.log | more
find /i "error" C:\Windows\setupact.log

These steps help pinpoint whether the problem is media, RAM, or disk I/O at the moment the failure happens. (itprotoday.com)

Recommended sequence: run MemTest86 first on the iBuyPower machine; run SeaTools (or similar) on any drive the BIOS fails to detect (after connecting it to a working controller); then use the setup command prompt/logs to correlate errors before swapping parts. If diagnostics show multiple hardware faults (SMART failures, mem errors), replacement is the sensible next step.

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Member Avatar for jaishankar

Well, you guys are going to hate me.

I've got two computers that need repairs (I'm the tech guy home from college and family expects it to be done).

One is an HP, almost-legacy age (5-6) years and on boot-up, does not recognize the hard-drive, I'm not sure if master or slave settings are incorrect, but I will need to double check that. Assuming they are, shouldn't bios automatically detect the hard-drive? The drive in question is a Seagate Barracuda, 80gb with 7200 rpm.

The second one is an IBuyPower.com product, about 2-3 years old. When I returned home, the original hard-drive was completely fried. I purchased a new hard-drive for this, an 80 gb Seagate Barracuda, 7200 rpm, IDE/ATA (not knowing that this was in the other computer, I assure you). On copying the Windows XP installation files, I get tons of "File cannot be Found" errors, seemingly randomly popping up. It may be due to a bad CD/DVD ROM drive, but I am unsure what to do.

Thank you for any and all your help, have a good night.

Hi
U said the HP system is 5-6 yrs old can u give more info about the MB, Processor etc. Some old MB dont support 80GB HDD

And the second thing can be due to Bad CD. If the cd has more scratches and the CD-Rom drive is old as u said the system is 2-3 yrs old, so the Reading speed of the CD-Rom drive might be less, which cannot read the CD's written in higher speed properly

Member Avatar for MPelham

Thank you so much for your prompt reply!

Firstly, I do know the old HP system can support 80 GB hard-drives, there was an 80 GB hard-drive installed previously that did work in the machine, but for system specifications, this is all I could pull out of Bios:

Installed Memory - 320 MB, In 0 - 64 MB, in 1, 128 MB, in 2 - 128 MB

Bios Ver 1.02

Pentium 3 450 MHz.

No info that I could find on ATA-IDE drive support.

For the second computer, the CD has no scratches and is brand new, but I read that the faster the drive, the worse it was for the installation, interesting that you are saying the opposite. I installed windows XP on the older computer long before it had its meltdown, and there were no problems such as this. But, I should perhaps install a different CD-ROM drive and try that.

Thanks for all your help!

Member Avatar for jaishankar

Thank you so much for your prompt reply!

Firstly, I do know the old HP system can support 80 GB hard-drives, there was an 80 GB hard-drive installed previously that did work in the machine, but for system specifications, this is all I could pull out of Bios:

Installed Memory - 320 MB, In 0 - 64 MB, in 1, 128 MB, in 2 - 128 MB

Bios Ver 1.02

Pentium 3 450 MHz.

No info that I could find on ATA-IDE drive support.

For the second computer, the CD has no scratches and is brand new, but I read that the faster the drive, the worse it was for the installation, interesting that you are saying the opposite. I installed windows XP on the older computer long before it had its meltdown, and there were no problems such as this. But, I should perhaps install a different CD-ROM drive and try that.

Thanks for all your help!

Your welcome

I mean that a drive with 24x speed might not be able to read the CD's written in 52X, there may be many reasons,
Did u check BIOS and tried to detect HDD, have u set the jumper on primary master i.e., from the IDE cable first two pins and the CD-Rom drive on Slave if HDD is on Primary Master, try changing the power connector, or the IDE Cable

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