its actually a gateway mA7 my bad... =[

well something is wrong with my friends laptop.. he brought it to me to figure out whats wrong and i have yet to see this sort of problem... when he goes to boot up.. everything looks fine.. that is until we get to the login screen.. we click on his user name.. enter his password... and it shows as if its about to login.. shows desktop background... for a second... then logs us back out and says closing network connections saving what ever it normally saves... i boot safe mode.. same thing happens on both his account and the admin account.. i finally say screw it and decide to go out and buy a copy of windows xp so we can reformat this thing since he doesnt have any cd's and his warranty is no longer available because he just got a 1 year plan.. well i goto boot from the windows xp disc. inspects everything looks fine. once i get to the screen that lets me choose whether to repair or install a fresh copy of xp on.. i press enter.. and it says "setup did not find any hard disk drives installed in your computer. Make sure any hard disk drives are powered on and properly connected to your computer, and that any disk related hardware configureation is correct. This may involve running a manufacturer-supplied diagnostic or set up program"

Setup cannot continue. to quit setup, press F3.

Same thing happens when i press R to repair.. im really not sure what i should do =[! gateway is useless and they said my warranty is up so they wont help us. i just want to reformat this beast.... i just dont get how it can show xp is loading and then login screen... but it says it cannot find the hard disks or w.e...

The second R command would not even exist, if it couldn't find the harddrive
So something incorrect with your diagnosis

Anyway, to fix the fault download gparted, remove the Partition fully (note your Xp CD boot up also has the option to remove the Partition)
Then install Xp clean

this sounds like the "blaster" virus of a few years ago. It may not be though - could be a corrupt boot sector or partition. I agree with kimsland - do a clean install.

The laptop has a SATA drive and the windows instalation CD does not come with a driver for such an interface. Check the system BIOS setup program for an option that disables AHCI mode on the SATA interface.