No Hard Drive?

[scottuk]

Hi there,

This is my first post on this site, hopefully you will be able to help me out.

Yesterday I was hit with a fairly bad trojan, thankfully I was able to resolve the issue but it's left my computer feeling worst for weather. I've decided I want to go back to Windows XP rather than VISTA as it runs much nicer but when I went to install the OS I got the following error message:

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

After doing a bit of research, it's apparently something to do with the BIOS setup, so I went into the BIOS setup to check the hard drive and it said "Not Installed"...

This would usually mean that I have had some sort of a hardware failure, but as I'm currently speaking from the OS on the not installed hard drive there seems to be something wrong.

I have done a chkdsk which never came up with any errors and the device manager in the control panel is also coming up with no errors. I can save/edit/load programs without any issues at all.

I've added a picture link but apparently I can't do it due to the low post count.

You can see what I mean about the BIOS.

I've asked all my computer wizz kid friends, but non of us seem to be able to work it out. I've checked the connecting wires as well.

Looking for some advice!

Thanks,

Scott.

 

[kimsland]

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

After doing a bit of research, it's apparently something to do with the BIOS setup

During Windows Xp setup you will notice a prompt that states "Press F6 to install a hard drive controller" (actually can't think of the exact phrase, but the F6 prompt will display for a few seconds)

You need to press F6 and install the HardDrive controller that comes from your Computer's (or Motherboard's) support driver page

Download the Dos driver
Unzip it (if it's zipped up)
Copy it to floppy (or CD if you don't have floppy drive, but floppy is preferred)
Then press that F6 command on Windows initial setup
Then put the floppy in when asked

Continue setup, removing the old Vista partition
Do not manually create another partition (unless you want more than 1)
Continue installing Windows (Windows setup will automatically create the partition and format to NTFS for you during setup)

 

[scottuk]

Sadly, it never worked. Press F6 but it wouldn't give me any device options, just said "none"... When I went to press Enter it just went to the normal installation page followed by the cannot find hard drive.

 

[kimsland]

Hmm Was this with the Dos driver extracted and placed on a floppy or CD (that was already inserted (well the floppy anyway, with CD you would need to remove the Windows CD and put the Dos Driver CD in)