Help please! Partition drive Problems!!

Question

Hello, I'm fairly new and not a techy person but I'm having problems with my laptop..thanks! So, I recent;y installed a version of windows on my Dell Laptop, Inspiron 6000. I worked for a week or two then when I turned it on a couple days ago, it won't go pass the black screen with the blinking white line. A user some where on this site on an other post that had similar problems said that  it to re-install and delete the existing partition and create another one with 120GB. I did but when creating another partition, I tried to type in the 122880 MB (122880MB = 120GB), and upon pressing ENTER, the numbers 122880 goes back to the number of MB of the partition disk space I had previously. I hope this all make sense. I do not have the money to buy another laptop. I have a Windows XP CD, but not the original. The laptop worked fine before with this version. To fix the blinking line on the start-up black screen, all I need to do is to re-install windows XP and change the partition to 120GB. But every time I try to change the number of MB, it doesn't work but reverts back to the original number. Is there another way to fix the blinking-white-line-on-the-start-up-screen? THANK YOU!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Also, I tried to use the repair control...doesn't work. Thanks! ~Skyavermore

ejn63 · Accepted Answer

You can partition it - but you don't have to.  It's only necessary for drives larger than 120G.  Next step would be to run a full manufacturer diagnostic on the drive -- I suspect it's faulty.

ejn63 · Answer

Can you get into the BIOS setup (f2 at powerup)?  If so, what is reported as the drive size?

ejn63 · Answer

In order to repartition the disc, you must boot the system from a CD or DVD - NOT from the hard drive.  Are you doing this?

skyavermore · Answer

Yes, I did. CD/DVD/DRIVE...

skyavermore · Answer

Yes, I can...where is the drive size located? Is it 'Primary Hard Drive' = 80 GB HDD

ejn63 · Answer

Yes, that's it.  You should not need to partition a drive of only 80G though -- did you by any chance clone the original drive to the new one?  What's the model number of the new drive?

skyavermore · Answer

Why can't I partition it? No....what do you mean by clone?

skyavermore · Answer

Oh....I see...thanks mate....and now that I have reinstalled the windows....which is now like the SEVENTH time....I downloaded drivers from the dell website. However, PCI and PCI modem and Ethernet are missing...are these in your fields too? To connect, I have to have a removable flash drive. I typed in my Service tag into the website but once downloaded...it doesn't seem to work. Can you help or refer any user? Thank you so very much! =D

skyavermore · Answer

BTW, including the question above...do you know why I had the blinking screen of black eternity at the start up? LOL

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