reformat hard drive that doesn't exist?!

[tifosi]

Hey guys, did some searching, didn't find anything useful, so here goes:

Here is my situation. My laptop had windows xp, but a system restore was run and was accidentally interrupted. The restore apparently deleted some files that were necessary for windows to boot up, so I talked to one of my "computer friends" about what my options were for getting windows back up and running. He had a CD with linux on it, and he said we could boot using linux, retrieve the files that I wanted to save and put them on an external drive, then wipe the hard drive and reinstall windows. This sounded good to me.

He booted using linux, and I had an opportunity to retrieve all the saved files that I wanted to keep. Great. Then, he tried to format/wipe the hard drive. This is where the problems start. I'm computer literate, but when things get super technical, its just over my head. He said something about partitioning the drive, but didn't really go much further in the ways of wiping it clean. Later on I read online you can put your new XP cd in the cd drive and have it boot to the setup and wipe it from there. I tried just doing that, but when I do it says, "Setup did not find any hard disk drives installed in your computer."

I'm not sure if my friend gave me the shaft by doing something to the hard drive that makes the boot procedures not able to recognize it, or if there is just something I need to do/change in order for it to show up.

I'd like to just do the formatting with linux, take out the linux cd, and then put windows back on. I apologize for the legnth, but I wanted to be descriptive and not leave anything out. What's the best way to go about doing this?

Thanks

[oz]

"Setup did not find any hard disk drives installed in your computer."

Welcome to the forums!

Do you have a SATA drive?

That message sounds like maybe the installer is looking for SATA drivers for your hard drive, and the default WinXP installation CD doesn't include SATA drivers. They have to be installed separately, and can be installed right after the Windows installation begins using the F6 key (watch the screen for the option to do so).

You might have a "legacy" hard drive option in your BIOS that you can change to allow installing without SATA drivers.

[HROAdmin26]

Related

If you're using a "generic" XP CD, you will probably need SP2 slipstreamed (plus the SATA driver if the HDD is SATA) into the install CD.

In your case, you at least need to add SATA drivers (whether slipstreamed into the XP CD or via F6 > Floppy.)

Your BIOS may also have an option to run SATA in "Compatibility" or "Legacy" mode (vs. AHCI) to allow older standard IDE drivers to work.

Your best bet is to visit a Windows site.