XP+ HDD Firmware stuff

[Troll]

Right... I have a Maxtor HDD & motherboard with the nForce4 issue (drive not recognised)
Maxtor sends out a firmware update with the following instructions

unzip the attached files, copy loader to floppy, copy firmware file to separate floppy if necessary

boot with boot disk (with or without CD-ROM support) - take out boot disk and insert disk with FWloader.
type dload and press enter
select "no power control available" and press enter
select "automatically use first Maxtor drive" and press enter
drive information should now be displayed
insert floppy with the update file, select "All Code to the drive (Disk & Boot)"and press enter.
Select "perform the download now" and press enter, you are now faced with a warning that the code doesn't match this drive..., ignore and press any key. The update will perform, you are then prompted to
press space bar or C to continue or any other key to abort. Press space bar or C and select to abort at the next menu,
reboot and follow the first steps again until the drive information is displayed - check that the correct firmware is now displayed, if that is the case, the update has completed successfully

I've copied the files to a CD, booted into Safe Mode from the XP CD, swapped in the CD and ran DLoad - the program ran a while , HDD flashed but no message on the screen... I was expecting messages

Also tried Recovery console from the XP CD but the CD drive is locked at the command prompt - so I cannot swap the CD out

Do you think I have to create a bootable CD and put the files onto that?

[Toad]

boot with boot disk (with or without CD-ROM support)

That's what the man said !

[Troll]

Aha... but how do you make an XP boot CD (no floppy).. in the old days you used to sys disks - do you just copy

Boot.ini
NTLDR
Ntdetect.com

To a CD?

[Toad]

Oh bugger...no floppy ?? Is this a Dell machine that you've nicked from work ?

You need to create a standalone boot disk or CD for this to work.

There's a few good sites out there that can take you through creating a bootable CD but I can't remember off hand what they are. I think one of them may be Bart's site. I'll have a look.

---------------
To be honest you'd be better off buying/borrowing a floppy drive than going through all this, but here's the site anyway.

http://www.nu2.nu/bootdisk/cdrom/

[Troll]

Thanks... but what a feking palavour - might go the floppy route

[Ardesco]

I remember trying to install Win XP on my machine when I first bought all the bits for it. I got to the Raid drivers installation part and it asked me to inset my raid drivers into the floppy drive.......

bugger
Wouldn't let you burn them to CD and read them from CD drive, oh no I have to go dig out an old floppy and plug it in just to sort out the fecking raid drivers &*^*%

[Cactus]

There's a few good sites out there that can take you through creating a bootable CD but I can't remember off hand what they are.

Another site is this.
http://www.bootdisk.com/

[Troll]

Managed to get a boot CD called Bart PC and a second CD running on the machine. Both CD drives are visible in BIOS and in cmd line

So I have E:\ with the boot CD & F:\ with the update

When I run the DLoad from a command prompt it says "the system cannot find the file f:\DLoad.exe

I've tried setting the path to f:\
I've tried calling from e:\

...bit stuck

[Toad]

Make f: your current drive and do a dir. See anything ?

[Troll]

Make f: your current drive and do a dir. See anything ?

I can read all the files on there....