I have an HP Pavillion. The HD died and I just replced it with a new one (a Toshiba MK1032 GAX).
I am trying to install XP but when I get to the first step of setup, I am getting the following message:"setup did not find any hard disk drives installed in your computer"

It seems like it is not seeing the HD!!!

Any suggestion???

Thank you!

Hmm did you plug in the cables to the HD right or set it to Slave instead of Master drive ( it's on the back of the HD next to where you plug in all the cables, has a little switch and says "Master" or "Slave" switch to Master )?

Hope I helped ;)

This HD has no cables out. It looks like that
http://www.tomshardware.pl/storage/20050606/images/toshiba-pers.jpg

I didn't find any small switch to choose the master/slave mode.

Is that a laptop HD?

yes, it's a laptop HD.
I changed the HD after having the old one dead. This one is supposed to be recognized automatically once started up.
Thanks anyway :)

So your computer can still boot up but it just doesnt read the HD?

Then it's probably installed wrong, Try and install it again or try a fresh install of Windows

Hope I helped :)

well, it's booting from windows CD not from the Hard. I just place the new HD so it has nothing on it ....
It looks like it is not detecting the HD. It cannot find it!
I reinstalled the drive 3 times already but no change. It's very simple to install, there is not 100 ways of doing it....

I have no idea what to try now!

I having the same problems with my HP Pavillion. SAND have you fixed your's? If so how. I am trying to replace mine with a Western Digital HD and it won't read it. With the XP setup disk, it states that it did not find hard drive. Without the XP disk in the HD it states "Media test failure, check cable". I've changed the order the drives boot in the BIOS. Please Help!!

Did you switch your "Slave / Master" settings to Master?

Also try unplugging the cables and replugging them in, Also try cleaning out any stuff built up in your computer. Also make sure that the plugs dont have any bent points

This is a laptop/notebook. No cables to plug in. Old HD failed so I'm replacing with a new harddrive. Pins are good on new HD.

Mine is a laptop as well. So no cables. Did you fix the problem? If so what should I do?

Stupid mistake on my part. The old hard drive has a black plastic piece over the pins. Slide that off the old hard drive and put it on your new hard drive. Reinstall new hard drive. Should work great.

Disable SATA Native support from BIOS. I am sure ur problem will get solved. Cheers.

Disable SATA Native support from BIOS. I am sure ur problem will get solved. Cheers.
Disabling SATA Native support in the BIOS worked perfectly for me. Thank you juleat!

Dear all,

I recently bought a laptop, Sony Vaio VGN AR31S, with VISTA preinstalled... Due to this I could not get a couple of softwares to run (like AVID, video editing programme) so I made a partition where I tried to install XP PRO.

However a text that says: "Setup did not find any hard disk drivers installed in your computer" pops up when I try to install XP PRO on my VISTA preinstalled Sony Vaio laptop.

I called Sony and they said it should be possible to have both OS (VISTA and XP PRO) installed at the laptop (even though they only could give help & support for Vista since it came with the computer) but when I try to install XP I only get the "Setup did not find any hard disk drivers installed in your computer"…

Do any one had a similar problem and know if there is a possibility to get around this problem?

Thousands of thanks to everyone,

Kind regards,

Rodri (rodrigoferrada@yahoo.com)

http://apcmag.com/5485/dualbooting_vista_and_xp

Folks,
This problem is appearing more and more often now that SATA is becoming the standard and more users are refusing to switch to Vista and are installing XP on their new PC's. There is a well documented solution on this site which explains two ways to get around it:

proposedsolution.com/solutions/ps0019.php

Hope this helps

~Rosco~