This is not a new hard drive. It was my secondary drive from my main
machine. And if I pop it back in that machine as the secondary drive,
XP loads and sees the drive just fine. I've tried formatting and
resetting partitions from there with the same results.

It is a Western Digital 120GB (model# WD120JD). The jumper pins are
all blank which, according to the illustrations on the drive, means
"single or master." The drive is the only device on the first IDE
cable. The BIOS detects the drive correcetly. I booted off a Knoppix
CD (linux) and it was able to read the drive fine as well.

How does one "zero the partition table" - what software do I need to do
that? Can XP do it?

Jim


Mistoffolees wrote:
> Assuming that this is a clean installation on to a brand new
> Western Digital hard drive, that is one right out of the box
> from the factory, check that the jumper settings conform to
> the type of IDE cable used and the connections that are being
> made. Next, follow the instructions on setting the jumpers...
> they have been changed. The one most common cause of this
> symptom is having a jumper across the pins for Master or CSL
> when the HD is the only device on the IDE cable.