Install probelm ATI Radeon X800 XL, Win XP, New sys

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Ok, new system with the following components:
Athlon 64 3700+
Asus MB A8v-e Deluxe
500 watt PS
CD-RW drive
Western Digital HD (that seem to now be a paper weight - more in a minute)
Win XP
Nothing else installed yet because...

The ATI card (or more appropriately the drivers) seems to be causing problems. After reformatting the drive, the system seemed to be working fine. Upon installing the drivers for the graphics card, the system crashed and subsequently I can no longer access the hard drive at all - no safe mode, no nothing. When attempting to boot up, the system gives the message "NTLDR cannot be found". I can't even reformat again, because the system won't recognize the drive (the 80 GB drive shows up as something like a 138 GB unpartitioned volume).

I understand numerous people have had this problem with the ATI software, but I'd like to know if there's any way to recover the drive. It's only a year old, so I don't believe it's actually a bad drive.

Also, will updating the drivers prior to actually installing them help? Am I doing something else wrong?

Help!
 
Is the drive showing up in the BIOS? Make sure the hard drive power and data cables are on securely. This sounds more like a hard drive failure or corrupt system files.
 
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