My media center pc wasn't displaying in colour on the tv for a while, and then it wouldn't display anything at all. I looked under display options, and found that "extend my desktop onto this monitor" wasn't checked. I would tick it, but when I clicked "apply" the screen would flicker and then untick itself. For some reason I didn't think to try updating the drivers, but just figured I would reinstall windows. I put in my WinXP CD (it's a copy, but a legitimate copy, from when I was studying at uni and all students got free copies), but when it came to the point where you tell it where to install, it wouldn't find the partitions correctly. The drive is a Samsung 750gb, and I had partitioned it in to a 50gb primary for windows, and a 700gb logical/extended for data. The WinXP cd was only showing a single unformatted 128gb drive. My first thought was "f*ck, my partition tables are corrupted", and I spent a long time trying to restore the partition tables using ultimate boot cd. Weirdly, UBCD recognised the partitions ok (I should have clicked at that point I realise). Nothing seemed to work - whenever I put the WinXP cd back in, it would still only recognise a 128gb drive. I gave up on trying to fix the partition tables, and with the help of a mate's external enclosure, I copied all the data off the drive. Again, my laptop recognised the partitions perfectly well. Once I had all the data off I reformatted the drive, but WinXP still was only recognising the 128gb drive. I tried formatting the drive under WinXP Setup, but when it came time to reboot, rather than going into the next stage of the install, it just went back to not being able to boot, and not being able to find a proper partition. I then plugged in a fairly new Hitachi 1tb drive, and again, the winXP cd only recognised a 128gb drive. By now I was pretty sure that it wasn't the drives that were faulty! I cleared the CMOS, but no luck. I re-flashed the BIOS to the latest version, but again, no luck - WinXP still just sees a 128gb partition. I then ordered a new motherboard (a Biostar TA690G) to replace what I thought was a faulty mobo (it was/is a Gigabyte GA-MA69GM-S2H), but yesterday when I installed the new mobo, I was still getting the same problem. I'm utterly stumped by this. If it isn't the Mobo (surely two mobos having the same problem isn't likely?), and it isn't the HDD (again, two hdds having the same problem?), what else could it be? I've tried nearly all the apps on the UBCD to try and wipe/format/install/partition the hdd to get windows to recognise it, but I've had exactly zero luck. Any suggestions are very gratefully received. The System: Gigabyte GA-MA69GM-S2H or Biostar TA690G Motherboard AMD Athlon 64 X2 5000+ Socket AM2 2.6GHz OCZ 2GB Kit (2x1GB) DDR2 800MHz/PC2-6400 CL 4-4-4-15 PLATINUM XTC * 4 (ie, 4gb total) Samsung HD753LJ 750GB Hard Drive SATAII 7200rpm *32MB Cache* Hitachi 1TB SATAII 7200RPM HDD Abit wireless PCIx Pinnacle PCIx TV Tuner card
