Tricking a new computer into working (maybe)

UPDATE: Oh never mind, I’m just using a different hard drive now.

I have a recently acquired Gateway Pentium 4 that I am trying to upgrade to from the HP PIII I’ve been using for my programs that just have to run on a PC.

Problem 1: The Gateway wouldn’t boot from the CD-ROM drive so I could use the Windows XP installer to format the drive.

Solution 1: I attached this drive as a slave to my HP and formatted it there.

Problem 2: The drive wouldn’t format correctly.

Solution 2: Somehow, I just had to get the right combination of things in the Disk Utility (whatever it’s called) in Windows. Delete the current partition, create a new partition, leave the defaults, and do a quick format. Took me a while to figure this out, otherwise it would tell me that the disk would not format correctly.

Problem 3: The Gateway gets stuck at the Gateway splash screen and won’t let me into BIOS to set the boot device.

Solution 3: Unplug all the drives, or even unplug just the floppies and the hard drive, and I can get into BIOS just fine to set the boot device.

Problem 4: I still can’t get into BIOS when the HD is attached. I can, however, boot from the CD-ROM drive and start the Windows installation (up until it looks for a HD).

Solution 4: Here’s the fun part: I unplugged the HD cable and booted from the CD. Then, before it asked if I would like to install Windows, I plugged the HD in. Don’t try this at home, kids! Setup then located the drive, and by the time it got to asking if I would like to install, it found the drive and away it went!

Problem 5: Rebooting during install, not so good. I got a long low beep that wouldn’t stop.

Solution 5: I hit the power button and manually restarted.

Problem 6: Intel boot somethingy found a problem, so I had to boot from the CD again. Uh oh…

Solution 6: Trying recovery at the moment, more news later.

Later:
Installed again, didn’t give me a long beep at restart, but I got the same Intel Boot Agent media failure. Changed the boot order around in BIOS. Now it goes to a cursor (that I can’t do anything with) after the Gateway flash screen.

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