Thanks Optimist. I think you may have hit the nail on the head. Have never had it networked. Will sort it out tonight.

well new ide drive arrived today...forgetting the other one atm...Need to install this....

it says on the drive itself...go to BIOS select auto detect and enable logical block ...LBA..then reboot...
I could not find this

and on f1 on a reboot its say on the windows install disc...cant find any hard drives...not my week....

Dishwasher and fridge broke this week also..is that relevant :-)

Spellcheck looks to be broken as well. Just not your week is it?

BTW have you cleaned all the dust out of the machine. There's usually loads lurking there. Don't think this will help but worth doing anyway.

spell check fixed...PC interior now spotless,,,,and no cigar
nice blue screen though

foale

Do I gather that you are doing a clean Win XP install on your new disk?

Is the Disk a standard IDE or SATA?

How large is the new disk? How old is your Win XP setup disc?

hi its IDE 160...win XP is a recovery disk...yes quite old

its to install windows on it...as its brand new

blue screen says ENTER to install XP...but the straight asawy says cant find...the HDD

the HDD did saysomething about select auto detect in BIOS and enable LBA...could not see where that was

foale

I think the problem is that you must use a post SP2 installation CD for a large HDD.

If your disk is pre SP2, you need get hold of an SP2 instalation disk or create your own. Let me know if you need to do that and I'll try to find the instructions.

it is SP1
...recovery

how do I do that with my SP Pro service pack 1 CD

You need to copy the cd to a dirctory on a HDD and slipstream the entire SP2 file into it. If you look up slipstream on the MS site you should find some instructions. The difficult bit is to copy the files back to a bootable CD. MS does not help you there.

If you want to PM me your address I could put one in the post for you.

that is very kind I have PM'd you....

foale

Do you want XP Home or XP Pro?

its the XP Pro

foale

It's in the post.

thank you...this really is a full service PC clinic....lol

Optimist, when you have a moment:

Device manager shows IEEE 1394 Bus host controllers/
Texas instruments OHCI Compliant IEEE 1394 Host controller.

Alternatively, I could get hold of a wireless PCMIA card. I've got one somewhere.

SC

You may have to use your wireless card but I'm surprised that the laptop has an IEEE 1394 connection and not an ethernet one. Is there an RJ45 socket (the same as the sockets on your router) on the back? The 1394 socket is slightly larger and rounded at one end.

If the ethernet connection exists, it is possible that you have to enable it in the BIOS.

I can connect my laptop to my router with a normal network cable (ie RJ45). Just doesn\'t work! The 1394 socket is tiny - ie like a small mini usb socket. How do I get into the bios again. F? on bootup.

In bIOS now, what am I looking for?