Couldn't boot up, formatted installed win2k, still can't....

[Jarrett]

I'm trying to get my sister's computer working
Computer specs:
Custom built, local computer shop
600 PIII
384MB
Maxtor 33073H 30GB 5400rpm
mobo model M6TZF, from what I've fround it's a Biostar, but can't find much about it
cheapo CDRW
250W PS
originally had WinME, crashed late last year some time, brought to a computer guy and supposedly got it fixed and installed the XP upgrade

Suddenly got the "Invalid System Disk" error at boot up. Checked all drives, no floppy in, no CD in, boot order was floppy, CD, HDD. Tried quite a few times, same thing. Booted to floppy startup disk and I could browse around in DOS. Well my sister was kinda fed up with XP anyway and wanted me to wipe it out and install Win2k. No problem, except there was some stuff on there that needed to be saved. Figured no problem, I have a brand new HDD I just installed in my computer (just as a storage drive, WD 80gig) but I did install Win2k on it for the hell of it and was booting off of it instead of my main drive. I took my 2nd drive and installed it in her computer, secondary IDE port, master. Her HDD on primary master w/cd as slave. Yes, all jumpers correct. I was gonna copy the stuff over in DOS. It would not read my drive. Tried my drive alone, as the boot drive. It would start booting up, but hang up at the "Windows 2000 Professional - Built on NT Technology" screen, keyboard locked up. Hmmm....figured maybe since I installed that while it was in my comp, there was a hardware issue or something.

So, I took both those drives and installed in my computer. Booted to my main drive. All drives were listed in MY COMPUTER, but the messed up one couldn't be accessed. Booted to DOS, could acces them all there. BTW, by this time I had formatted my 2nd drive, the WD one just so I had a full, clean drive. Finally got the stuff I needed copied over from her drive to my storage drive. "Great, making progress". Reinstalled the drive in her computer. Primary master with CD on secondary master. Yes, jumpers and cables correct. Booted to floppy, ran fdisk, redid the partition, formatted. Booted to the Win2k CD, started the install. Chose to format to NTFS. Stared copying files. Noticed through all this it's taking a long time to copy the files, like 1 hour or so. It never took this long on my 550 PIII system. I've done this same install on a couple 400mhz Celeron, 128MB systems and it was way faster. Finally finished, rebooted to start Win. for the first time. Going great....boom. Got stuck on the same Win2k screen that my drive did. Again, keyboard locked, inactive. Got frustrated. Redid the whole fdisk, format, install thing again. Same thing, very slow copying files, get's stuck at startup. I don't know what to do next. She really can't pay someone to fix this right now and I sure can't pay for it.

Anyone have any ideas of what could possibly be the problem? What should be my next step to check?

[Telexen]

You can't install an OS on your system, and put the hard drive in another...you need to install it in the system

Have you tried just putting the questioned drive in a working system and running scandisk on it?

[Xeroid]

Yep, scandisk or go to the maxtor site and download their diagnostic tools to check the disk.

[Jarrett]

Originally posted by Telexen
You can't install an OS on your system, and put the hard drive in another...you need to install it in the system

Have you tried just putting the questioned drive in a working system and running scandisk on it?

I figured that about the install on different system. But I did install it on her HDD in her computer. I was gonna try to run scandisk on the questioned drive while it was in my computer but after having the problems of not being able to access it I forgot to do it after it was finally accessible.

[Telexen]

You don't need to access it to scan it...if it shows up as a partition (check Disk Management if it doesn't)...then just go to the Properties of it and you can run scandisk from the Tools tab, I believe.

[Xeroid]

The POWERMAX.EXE utility is designed to perform diagnostic read/write verifications on Maxtor/Quantum hard drives. These tests will determine hard drive integrity.

Linkage

[Jarrett]

Thanks, I'm running the Powermax utility.

[Jarrett]

I ran the Powermax utility and everything came out good. So it looks like the HDD is fine. I'm thinking somethings up with the motherboard now. Is there any sort of motherboard diagnostic utility?

*edit* Here's where it hangs up.....