invalid media type? (1 Viewer)

[RB ~ CTC]

hey hows it going

alright i bought two used 4.3gb hdd's off ebay, for $20.......i bought them that size coz im pretty sure thats how big the old one (that ended up stuffing up) on our old (1999) ibm aptiva used. i wanted to fix this computer up and put it in my room, coz its tsill a decent computer, it can play moveis, use the internet......do everything i really need it to do

so anyway i installed these new hard drives rite, and i turn the power on, and a dos window thing appears saying 'remove disks or other media. press any key to restart'. the thing is, htere are NO floppy disks or CDs in there. so i pressed keys to mae it restart, and that same message wouldnt go away

so i downloaded a win98SE boot disk (as i was told this was the OS that was loaded onto it), and it didnt make that screen again so i thought it was all good

i went to 'start windows with cd rom support' coz i also put the windows cd in there, and it eventually went bak to msdos prompt, saying like "A:/" so i did 'help' and foudn out that i could run scandisk

i ran scandisk C, and it came bak saying invalid media

so i thought i'd been conned, so i emailed the guy and let him no how disappointed i was that someone would con someone for $20, AND place an unpaid item dispute down for a dodgy product when i'd payed it 1 day after the agreed date, and he emailed me back apologising and saying they worked perfectly when he tested them, and offered me a full refund.

so im just wondering - is there actually something wrong with these disks, or am i doing something wrong?

your help'd be appreciated

cheers

mattycoss

 

[Adrian.]

Have you formatted them and reinstalled Windows? You can't install Windows on one computer and expect it to work on all, as far as I know.

 

[RB ~ CTC]

i cant even get that far

 

[Adrian.]

Put the win98 CD in there with no floppy disk in the drive. It should boot off that so you can format/install. You might have to change some settings in the BIOS to get the CD to boot.

 

[RB ~ CTC]

tried that, wen i tried to delete the partition it said disc error

 

[fatmuscle]

do all media devices get detected in your BIOS?

 

[RB ~ CTC]

yeah they do

 

[RB ~ CTC]

oh someone has to have an answer, surely

 

[sunny]

oh someone has to have an answer, surely

Without getting hands on experience with your hard disk, surely, no one can know for sure. An analogy is calling your mechanic on the phone and telling them your car doesn't start - they can guess all day and not know if they are correct, or not even know it when they guessed the correct answer.