Solved! Hard drive freeze up

[mikehunts2big]

Hello, i have a dell latitude r400gt laptop. it had a 120gb hard drive in it when i found it in a car at a local junkyard with windows xp and internet explorer 8 installed. it worked fine. i decided to put a 160gb hard drive into it since i had one just laying around. i put the windows xp cd into the cd/rom bay and started it up. it statred to format the disk. when it got through, it said something like it couldn't install windows xp. now i hear beeps when i put that hdd into the laptop. at first the bios froze, but now i can flip through the 6 pages ok. still get beeps when i put the hdd in. what happened? is the hdd any use anymore? windows will start to install, but when it finishes the dreaded blue screen pops up. any help would be appreciated. larry

 

[mikehunts2big]

yes, no problems with it. is there a maximum hdd that this laptop can process? also, i've seen memory websites that say you can put 512MB of ram in it. others say 256MB is the tops. can it accept 512MB or is it a waste of money buying them. larry

 

[mikehunts2big]

i also changed the cpu from a pentium11 400mhz to a pentium111 500mhz. i also upgraded the memory from 256mb to 512mb. it changed the model number from a cpi r400gt to a cpx h500gt. i get that annoying, but i'm told harmless, processor micrcocode update failure notification when i start up the computer, but not when i restart it. any easy fix to get rid of that annoying notification. tried the 160gb again, tried to format it but only got to about 20% and wouldn't go any further. might be a bad hdd, who, knows. larry