Help! cannot format

[boroboy]

Can anyone help? My laptop it has started to run very slowly, boot up takes 5 mins and when I click on a program it takes 10-20 secs to load. I have tried all the usual ways to speed up but to no avail. My problem is when I try to format I get this message:
Set up did not find any hard disk drives installed on your computer. Setup cannot continue. Are there any disks I can download to help me with this problem?
My laptop is a FUJITSU SIEMENS AMILO 3834M WITH 80GIG HARD DRIVE 512MEGS MEMORY WITH WINDOWS XP HOME
I am a 55yr old computer novice and any help will be appreciated.

 

[Tmagic650]

Hello boroboy,
I'm a 57 year old You have a failed hard drive. Can you replace it? If not, a computer repair shop can do it for you

 

[Rik]

It may be a sata laptop hard drive. If so, you will need a sata driver disk from siemens nixdorf.
We need to know what windows version you are trying to install!

 

[mscrx]

try to boot the laptop with 'ultimate boot cd' for example. it contains alot of disk tools to check your drive. it is possibly broken...
you could also try 'gparted live cd' - its a linux based boot cd for simple drive check and fast (re-)format.