Upgraded Compaq HD not recognised

I was upgrading a Compaq Presario 5476 for a spare PC when I found that the 4.3 gb Samsung hard drive with Win98SE and programs ready loaded I was putting in to it was not recognized by the Bios. I removed it out and tried it on my testbed pc and itworked perfectly. I installed a 2gb HD in the Compaq and that worked fine so I assumed that the bios needed upgrading to recognize the Samsung 4.3gb. The Compaq Website showed this was a common occurrence and there were many customers in the same position. All they suggested was a Bios Upgrade using a Sofpaq download, and if this didn’t work to try the Hard Drive manufacturer for a Drive Overlay……No chance! The Bios upgrade did nothing to help and of course the Samsung site had no mention of Drive overlays.

I tried using using a Windows 95 Bootdisk it worked. Fdisk was showing the drive perfectly. A DIR also showed everything on the drive was there and accessible but when booting up with a Win98SE Bootdisk it failedto recognize the drive.

I was still intrigued that I could do a DIR on it so it HAD to be recognized some how, so, booting up with the 95 disk, I swapped it out for 98SE boot disk and did a SYS c: to replace the operating system…..No good. In desperation I again booted up with the 95 boot disk and did a SYS C: to copy the 95 system files onto the Windows 98SE hard drive and lo and behold, it worked. The PC booted up from the hard drive and flashed a message saying incorrect command.com found but then went straight into windows. I booted up and tested it a dozen times before, crossing my fingers, inserted the WIN98SE Bootdisk once more and did a SYS c: to put it back the way it was (the way it should have been) with the correct command.com etc. and it all worked perfectly.

I have no explanation for why this should be but it might be worth a try for anyone in the same position.