Hi all,
I have a compaq presario v4000 laptop.Recently my harddrive died on me.It was a seagate 80 gig.I tested it through the bios before I took it out.It had failed.So I bought a fujitsu 100 gig.I installed it myself.When I turn laptop on it says a couple things then just repeats.doesnt seem to load anything i put in it.i have a bootable copy of windows xp home but it doesnt do anything except it goes to this caldra dr-dos program.i dont know what that is either.i would really appreciate some advice.thanks in advance

Hi all,
I have a compaq presario v4000 laptop.Recently my harddrive died on me.It was a seagate 80 gig.I tested it through the bios before I took it out.It had failed.So I bought a fujitsu 100 gig.I installed it myself.When I turn laptop on it says a couple things then just repeats.doesnt seem to load anything i put in it.i have a bootable copy of windows xp home but it doesnt do anything except it goes to this caldra dr-dos program.i dont know what that is either.i would really appreciate some advice.thanks in advanceMy guess is the new drive is not formatted. Can you see the new drive in the BIOS?

drdos should let you partition (fdisk) and format the drive. See here for drdos commands: http://www.drdos.com/dosdoc/usergeng/08ugch8.htm#285


Or you might get a laptop drive adapter and install the new drive as a slave in a desktop PC, partition and format, then put it back in the laptop.

See adapters here: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16812203012

As stated, before the drive can be used it needs the partition/s set and then formating.

I usually use partition magic, boot this from flopy, from there you can partition the drive into either one partition (using the whole disc) or more if needed, also make the main partition active (usually C drive).

Then format the partition/s, if only using one partition on the drive you can once it HAS been partitione get the XP install to do the formating, you have the choice to format the drive in either FAT32 or NTSF, NTSF is best.

Then it will continue to install XP.

colin.