Boot with boot disk but my hard drive arent detected

[rigmah]

Im formatting my friends laptop. I boot with a boot disk but when i get the dos prompt, it doesnt detect the c: drive so im unable to format it. What can i do?

the laptop has XP on it and ive tried both a xp and 98 boot disk

rigmah

 

[tornadobox]

what are you trying to format it for? best bet is to boot off the OS CD and format and install from there (if you're trying to install a new OS).

 

[rigmah]

i want to install xp over but its not bootable....i thought it was only a upgrade

 

[rigmah]

anyone know why the hard drives arent being detected or how i can make the laptop detect them?

 

[Kitros]

what does it read in the bios? does it see it there?

why are you reinstalling? maybe the HDD died.(few bad sectors) obviously it does detect it as you have that temp partition. can you access the cdrom, and try going from there?

 

[zzzz]

the XP upgrade CD is bootable btw.

 

[Bovinicus]

First, make sure all cables and connections involved in the harddisk subsystem are secure.

Second, make sure all jumper settings related to this subsystem are also properly selected.

Third, make sure your drive is showing up in the BIOS. If not, try manually enetering in the information necessary (Heads, Cylinders, Etc.). The information is usually on a label on the harddisk.

Fourth, Make sure your drive is properly partitioned. If not, you will need to do this before you can format it.

 

[Kitros]

^-----------------yup... that's a somtimes skipped step.

use the "fdisk" function from the bootdisk.