I finally had to do it.

[Lastat]

I actually purchased a usb drive with WinX on it from Wal-mart "where we make the customer work as well" (but hey we get just as good health care as the employees for that little bit of work, none) and I finally installed it again. Yes I had the free version but then they killed x-fire, then they killed the drivers for my video cards and and kept on doing it, I could not have three displays any more (an LCD telly and two 19" wide). So I went back to Win7 since I had many serialz for that. I found out when you call to register your copy, always call, when they ask how many times have you installed windows, always say zero or they hang up. I still can't see my 3Tb HD, yes I know about the file system but damn man somebody has to make an easy way to get windows on a big hard drive. I would wager there is money in that program, that users will bootleg anyway.

Any tips or references to shut off all the bloatware and spyware? Cortina is useless, it doesnt need to listen to me or searching my puter before i tell it to. Also, why assume my lousy old tower is a mobile device? Are they too lazy to make it figure it out.

Holy crap I'm raging! Well I had to wipe my puter

Any easy tips on how to fix the drive? Tell me now before I get too much back on here. I do have some hardware skills and tools, removing the drive is not too much of a problem.

[jim]

It's been a while since I messed with this but here is what I remember.

Here is what you are running into.
support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/2581408/windows-support-for-hard-disks-that-are-larger-than-2-tb

You need to change the partitioning type from MBR to GPT (in the first paragraph of link). Also your sata controller needs to be able to handle the disk so check the drivers to make sure. And I'm pretty sure you need to be running 64 bit windows 7 not 32 bit.

If you plan to boot from this disk your system board needs to be able to boot using UEFI instead of from BIOS. That depends on your board hardware and not all boards have that ability.

If you have data on your 3tb drive that you are wanting to save you might need something like this
www.ubackup.com/windows-7/windows-7-maximum-disk-size.html
I think the free version lets you convert but if not then check your drive manufacturer for tools. There may be someone who has a freeware version if those didn't work.

Good luck.