PCG-F560 Hard Disk Nightmare

[Gurm]

HELP!

Ok, I wanted to give the old F560 to my neice to use for school. It's a P3-600, it ought to be fine.

Now, when I started (last weekend), it was running FINE. No problems at all, running Windows 2000.

So I opened it up and replaced the RAM. Instead of 2x64 we now have 2x128. Then I replaced the hard disk. Went from a 9GB to a 20GB.

This is where the problems began. The BIOS wouldn't recognize the 20GB. So I figure "fine, she doesn't NEED the 20GB", and put the 9GB back in ... and it won't recognize the 9GB either now! ARGH!

LBA says it's 420MB. CHS says it's the right size, but it gets read/write errors. The drive itself is good - I slapped it into my new laptop and tried it out. No problems.

Any ideas? Could it be the ribbon cable? The controller board? The BIOS? I tried flashing the BIOS again with the latest from the Sony site (nice of them to NOT include the old ones on the site!) but it didn't help.

- Gurm

[kee-lo_]

I think the fact you put more memory than the machine can handle might be the problem.

[Gurm]

I thought of that, and put the memory back to the way it was from the factory - a single 64MB stick (the original one) in Slot0.

Didn't help.

- Gurm