right so, i have this laptop..right.. im trying to install windows right.. and uh.. yeah.. no seriously im trying to install windows and when it gets to the part where it says to install windows xp bla bla press ENTER when i do that.. it says windows can't install cuz there is no hd on it! but when i go to the BIOS it reads the hd perfectly i also installed linux on it with no problems.. but when i try to install windows.. i cant it tells me there is no hd no active partitions.. i don't get it and than when i reboot by pressing F3 than it don't want to boot from cd again :/ is pissign me off any ideas? :/ or any tools i can use to check scan repair the hd perhaps? :/
Have you booted from that HDD before? if its a new one check your connecters and make sure it has power to it
seatools is only for seagate hdd's, if you have an samsung hdd, you can better use samsung's tool, most brands have a hdd test program
Seatools isn't only for Seagates, I use it in the tech office for all kinds of drives, most of them are Maxtor's or Western Digitals. Spinrite fixed my IBM drive(personal drive at home) just this past week. It wouldn't load up any OS, tried 2 Linux distro's and Windows. After the scan it fixed the problems and now the operating system works flawlessly.
If all those fail. Try Ultimate Boot CD. Its difficult unless you are good with this kind of stuff though.
thanks for the imput ill check.. i have no idea what brand is the hdd is an HP laptop from 06 not sure whats hdd it has
you most probably have a SATA HDD. XP has no native support for SATA drives so you'll have to make your own XP installer by adding SATA drivers to it. or try Vista.....
Or just have your SATA floppy with you. <.< Seriously, I've also got a SATA HDD, when it asks if you want to install additional drivers, choose yes and input your SATA floppy. Should work that way.