Comment 9 for bug 84780

Hi Brian Murray, i am so sorry for the so long delay, but i got frustrating problems to my internet connection for months! Everything is working now and i can give more info about this problem.
I didn't tried the smartmontools because i already tried a lot of testing programs in windows (scandisk, disk doctor, chkdsk, parttion magic, etc...) but nothing seems to report an hardware failure.. Rather, i think it's an hardware incompatibility that could be corrected. I'll explain you why i think so:

- the mobo is an old Asus P5A Socket 7 (AMD K6-2 400Mhz)
- the hd is a 160gb maxtor PATA
- bios auto-detecs about 31 or 34gb (it has the last firware: year 2002)

tryng installing other OSes (like windows, or the old mandrake 10.0), they detect only the bios size but they can install..
insted, ubuntu detecs about 120gb (good thing!) but can't see any formatted type of space (not even the bios size that works with the other OSes) so i can't install :(
i thought that ubuntu does not care about the bios when installing, but in this way, it can't recognize and manage old hardware properly.
Here, i hope i've been clear and i hope to gave you enought info about this problem, but if you need more explanations feel free to ask everything info you need!
I thank you again a lot for your availability!

P.S. i've not tried ubu 7.04 yet, however i think my problem hasn't been corrected.