[BC] RE: A Puzzling Computer Problem

[Vernon Kuehn]

There is one possible problem that has not been mentioned.  Some of 
the symptoms you have listed seem to go beyond what havoc this 
problem can cause, but when it happened to me it was close to what 
you are describing.

Older machines, maybe as new as 5 years,  have a BIOS that supports 
only smaller hard drives.  Depending on who made the motherboard  and 
who made the BIOS,  the results can vary:  Put in a 40GB drive in a 
machine that supports up to 32GB and it will sometimes refuse to boot 
period.... does not recognize the drive... and sometimes will work 
very normally until you start trying to write data out to the space 
between 32 and 40GB.

Other machines will handle an 80GB but not a 120.  I went through 
about 3 weeks of chaos on my two home machines about two years 
ago.  I bought a new drive and began moving drives around between the 
two machines.  Ended up getting BIOS updates on both machines and 
everything has been peaches and cream since then.

Quick.  Give me some wood to knock on!