Windows xp doesnt reconize any hard drives

wahjahka

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Oct 19, 2008
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i need some serious help with this, my brothers laptop broke (awhile i ago i believe), its a little over 3 years old. (its an HP)
heres the problem:
i turned it on and the windows xp loading screen came up but then the blue screen flashed really quick and the laptop turned off.
so i figured i would just do a fresh install of xp, so i find my windows disk and proceed to install windows, when windows asks me if i want to do a regular install or a repair install, i select regular (or whatever it says) but then it says that windows xp cant find any hard disks....so then assumed that it was the hard drive, so i just bought a new one, installed it and proceeded with the xp install, same thing happened, is it the windows xp or the hard drive or something else?
i really need the solution to this problem today..>(i have to give it to my brother before he goes away tonight)

another note: when the first hard drive was still installed i went into the BIOS and ran a HDD self test and it failed in about ten seconds (10%), i did the same thing with the new hard drive and it passed the first step (the second step is still currently running)

any help will be outstanding, thanks.

also, i wasnt sure if this belonged in this category or windows xp, sorry if its in the wrong one,
i will google this after i post this....
 

foxy_roxy

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Sep 9, 2009
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A long time ago I had a similar problem, in my case it turned out to be 1. Faulty Hard drive 2. Faulty Windows XP install disc ( the install disc probably was scratched with frequent reinstalls LOL.). Bought a new drive and a different install disc and the story had a happy ending.
 

Paperdoc

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Is the hard drive a SATA unit, perhaps? Win XP cannot deal with a SATA drive unaided - it only understands IDE (aka PATA) drive interfaces - and this includes the Install routines.

If that is your situation, there are two was to fix. The easy one in most machines is provided in the BIOS screen for details of how the SATA drive is handled. Usually you have the option to have the BIOS Emulate an IDE drive. This fools Windows into believing that and it knows all about those beasts and everything just goes.

If it is set instead to native SATA or AHCI mode you need to be able to install a driver for it from a floppy disk. To do that you need to make a floppy disk with the native SATA or AHCI driver(s), as appropriate, for the mobo disk controller you have. Then, of course, you need to have a floppy drive unit in the laptop to read that disk. If you have those resources and want to use this HDD unit in one of these modes, Windows Install has the way to use them. Early in the Install process a screen will ask whether you want to install some extra drivers and you must push the "F6" button to do so - no F6 and it will time out to proceed without. But if you push the F6 button you have the opportunity to put your driver floppy in the drive and load a driver from it. It will come back to the same screen and offer you an opportunity to load another driver - sometimes there are more than one required, so check the machine's manual. Once you have loaded all the required drier(s) this way you continue. Windows Install will make those drivers a permanent part of this installation and from henceforth the machine WILL be able to use the non-IDE device no trouble.
 

wahjahka

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its not the disk, i use the same one for a repair install on my other pc