only 504 MB shows

[Wyndy]

only 504 MB shows of the 8 gig HD.. I did get windows 98 on that small Pri Dos partition , now how do I go about reclaiming the invisable remainer of the hard drive?

this computer has been a challenge for me.. Aptiva 2144-A14.

what commands do I type where?.. oh, it is late and I am cross eyed over this with fatigue.

Laurie

[Direct1]

The BIOS probably doesn't support that size HDD. Those old PC's were around before the HDD's sizes started going crazy. You'll either have to update your BIOS or use a disk overlay program to fool the BIOS. Either way, you'll lose everything and have to re-install...

Good luck! :D

[Direct1]

This may help...

http://www-1.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?rs=0&q1=Aptiva+2144-A14&uid=psg1PMYS-3KENMW&loc=en_US&cs=utf-8&cc=us&lang=en

Good luck! :D

[Wyndy]

Tried a dynamic disk overlay program from Western Digital and the computer then saw it as not formatted so Windows could not be installed ,although it DID let me have larger partitions . Win 2000 let the HD be in a 2 and a 6 gig partition BUT there were multiples of com ports with errors and I could not get any modem to dial .

soo back to win 98..where everything works except having a one 8 gig hard drive.

Does anyone have a decent Overlay program suggestion? I have til Tuesday morning to figure this out. Gives me some time to reformat and try new options if any of you have any?

Thanks Direct1 for your input! At this point I'd settle to get it back in 2 gig partitions LOL

[Direct1]

Tried a dynamic disk overlay program from Western Digital and the computer then saw it as not formatted so Windows could not be installed ,although it DID let me have larger partitions
It's been a long time since I've used an overlay but don't you have to format it after the partitions are created? Win98 cannot do it by itself whereas Win2K can during installation.

Good luck! :D

[Wyndy]

thanks ! and yes.. you do have to format it after doing that and shut down, but then when I install windows it does a scan disk and says there are clumps of bad sectors that evidently is the overlay program?..remove that and the scan disk problem goes away but the small space reoccurs..

The self formatting is why I thought I'd give Win 2000 a try..I am at my wits end.. wait.. I was already there.. ; )

[Direct1]

Did you try that link I posted? Here is a quote from it...
Instructions for creating a recovery diskette for 2144-2168-Axx models preloaded with Windows 95. This diskette also resolves the "Not Enough Disk Space" error after adding a hard drive larger than 2.5GB.
Wouldn't need the overlay IF that worked...

Good luck! :D

[Wyndy]

looked at it but not running win 95 now in that cursed thing. wasn't certain it would work..will give it a try tho

[Direct1]

I would, you have nothing to lose. ;)

[leprechaun_40]

Just a quick simple question. Did you Fdisk that drive with a win98 boot disk?? If so, did you tell it YES on large disk ??

[Wyndy]

yep..I did..

got the system now running 98..2 gig HD.and a 6.. so I can live with that .. everything is functioning.. took the EZDrive program to set it up, then unistalled it after and it left the formats behind so windows could install..

[Wyndy]

OH! and in desperation I updated the bios . That may have contributed to the success..