Windows does not detect harddrive

I'm trying to fix a friends Toshiba Satellite laptop. It has windows vista preloaded on it.
i've updated the bios, got ahold of vista cd to run the repair but when you boot the cd it shows the progress bar then goes away to a black screen with white cursor.
I've also tried using my winxp cd to repair, but it does not see the hdd.
I've used SLAX and it mounted the hdd just fine, i could look at all the files on the hdd. So why can SLAX see it and not windows?

there's that vista screen with the green progress bar going from left to right over and over, then it goes black with a white cursor that you can move around.