I have an 80 GB hard drive to replace the one that died in my DPS16. Can you give ne intructions on how to format/partition and load the OS back on? Thanks.

You can use c:>fdisk/mbr ( in dos mode )
Try to partition in dos mode
And format in dos mode,

Sounds like theres a partition hiding somewhere. You dont need any third party software to do what youre doing. Cli start button and in the run box type Disk Management ....in the window which opens you should see all the drives on the computer .... right click on your 1TB and choose delete partition and also any partition which is not allocated now right click again and choose ne partition. Hopefully after all this you have back your 1TB........cheers and please vote

If you want to save your data first you'll need to back up the drive. Go to seagate.com and download Discwizard and it's instructions. Follow the instructions and you'll be able to make the drive any size you want up to it's limit.

did you partition your hard drive into more than one partition? If so, then did you purposely partition your "C" drive to 17-20 GB? If it's only showing up 17 GB then the other partitions are not formatted yet, or they are formatted to a file format that Windows isn't capable of reading.

You may have the hard drive partitioned into two or more partitions.
Delete all the partitions and create a single partition and then format this single partition on the hard drive.

If there are files on the drive that you need to recover, then do not format it. It sounds as though the computer that you put the drive into has an issue where the bios perhaps does recognize the drive correctly. Perhaps that can be corrected by updating the bios in the computer, and trying the drive again. Or you may want to put it back into the original computer, back up the files to other media, and then put the drive in the computer and re-partition.

What does the FDISK - "DISPLAY PARTITION INFORMATION" utility report? Do you have a copy of FDISK? If the partitoins in FDISK add up correctly, then it could just be that the data is corrupt, and windows is just unable to read. If that's the case, you should try a recovery application to restore your data..

did you create a boot partition and format NTFS?

I think this model is still an IDE type. You set the 32GB limit then jump the settings to read the full capacity of the drive. If you are trying to load XP OS from a blank drive.

First prime the hard drive, you can do low level formatting and use third party software to partition and format the drive. on FAT32 partition you can only use 8GByte to make the drive bootable. Make it primary if I remembered it correctly and active. Or use the NTFS format.

You can use also if it have the manufacturers' hard drive utilities to check the hard drive integrity. I know they have it. It also equip with zero fill to renew chain and links of the drive. Then partition, format, primary and active. Then load your OS.

Check also your CD disc integrity, scratches do make a lot of troubles. And also your cdrom/dvdrom drive.

Start from scratch. Start the installation from the beginning

Get the hard drive replaced. It was probably damaged during shipping.