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GX280 Numerous Issues
Hello,
Recently we replaced about 150 GX260's on lease return with GX280's (tower aspect). Since then, we've had numerous hard drive failures, many machines with the faulty heatsink (some employees actually went home stating stress caused by the "Jet Engine" on their desk), faulty floppies, RAM, the list goes on.
First question:
Does this seem to be a common theme amongst the 280's? We have a mix of XP and Win2k OS's on the machines (we've never had a problem getting 2k to work on a 280).
Second Question:
Installed a 250gb IDE HDD (Western Digital) for a user with w2k. The BIOS reads it as a 250 gb, but the OS says it's a 150 or so, unformatted, just what the disk management says. Are there special Dell ATA drivers I need to get? Thanks in advance.
Windows 2000 and XP require service packs and a registry change to support 48 bit LBA.
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/305098/EN-US/http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb%3Ben-us%3B303013
48-bit Logical Block Addressing (LBA) support for ATA Packet Interface (ATAPI) disk drives that can increase the capacity of your hard disk to more than the current 137 gigabyte (GB) limit.
Note Windows XP does not support 48-bit LBA support unless you are running Windows XP SP1. If you want to use 48-bit LBA support, you must apply Windows XP SP1 or later- I just did some searching myself on the WD site and found that same answer :-PThe image we use was a machine built with the Microsoft Volume Licensing version of Win2k with service pack 4, so I assumed it was already installed. I guess that was not the case :-\Thanks for the quick responses.
Maxtor makes a utility called the Large Ide enabler that will patch your Registry to enable 48 bit LBA.
http://www.maxtor.com/en/support/downloads/big_drive_enabler.htmMaxtor's Big Drive Enabler is a one step executable that enables support for drives larger than 137 Gigabytes in Windows 2000 Service Pack 3 and XP Service Pack 1. This utility takes the guess work out of editing the Windows registry. The Big Drive Enabler fixes an operating system limitation. This utility is needed anytime a Hard Disk Drive larger than 137 GB is connected to the motherboard's ATA bus, regardless of any system BIOS that supports 48-bit LBA.
Note: Failure to install the required service packs and install the Enable Big LBA patch can result in data loss when accessing the hard disk beyond 137 Gigabytes. For more information regarding Windows limitations and the 137 Gigabyte barrier please read Maxtor Knowledge Base Answer ID 960 and Microsoft Knowledge Base Article
http://service.maxtor.com/rightnow/product_manuals/137GB_Solutions.pdfhttp://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=303013
Jesse L (retired)
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Posted March 24th, 2005 18:00
Quina,
Thank you for using the Dell Community Forum.
I have not heard any issues with the GX280'S. Run the diags on the system to see if that will show anything that is going bad on the systems.
Jesse L (retired)