So I have a laptop thats an HP. the old hard drive that was in it was kaput so I bought a 160GB WD internal drive. Fired up the laptop and had the windows xp cd in it and it said it couldnt detect the hard drive. So i was pissed cuz i thought i bought a dead hard drive. Went to the store and bought a 320GB from WD, put it in, fired it up again. Still....said hard drive cannot be detected blah blah blah. So this frusterated me more. Then my friend gave me a CD that came with some of his WD hard drives that had drivers on it. Fired that up with each of the drives and the hard drives seem to be fine. So that leads me to believe that either A. The hard drives needa be hooked up externally for some weird reason. or B. HP hardware or WD hardware for some odd reason wont allow you to install windows XP onto it. What do you think? Is there something im doing wrong? What am i not seeing? PLease share any info you may have! Thank you -SchooBoiiwhats you laptop model? Does it take PATA or SATA?

Did you enter your Bios and did you see any HD being detected? If your bios sees the hard drive then it could just be that the HD are RAW format and for some reason the CD did not pickup the hard drive,

If your BIOS is not seeing it try pushing in your HD in a bit tighter to ensure it is not LOOSE.

Some HD are picky with the specs of certain HD if we can have you model number of your laptop we can see if there are any restrictions.My notebook model is an HP pavilion dv6500 Notebook PC
processor speed of 1500 MHz
1Gb Ram
it takes sata hard drives, i have this adapter thing thing that allows it to be placed into the COMPUTER.
i dont have a model number?? unless im bein braindead right now lol i have a product number if that helpsss? anyone? any help or advice to offer?I looked up you spec sheet it does take SATA,
In your laptop BIOS do you see the Hard drive listed though? I don't see anything that would restrict you from your computer from picking up the Hard drive.

Also quick question: When you fired it up and said did not detect HD, did you change your laptop setting to boot from CD Drive first instead of HD? A RAW HD will always be undetected.

Is that where the Hard drive is not getting detected?Right this second i am running a hard drive diagnostic that is taking forever. I will tighten the screws holding the drive in place right now and fire it BACK up. The system has the PhoenixBIOS system. I am unfamiliar with it as of now because my frusteration has caused me to RUSH through half the stuff i've done. I am going to look up the HD in BIOs and see if it comes up here in a sec. the diagnostic is at 80%. and yes i had the laptop boot from the CD first. right when it gets READY to start putting the XP files onto the drive is when it says it doesnt detect the drive. hit me with some input and an update is coming shortly after thisWell you are running diagnosis and software off of it, so I assume yes the hard drive is there and it is reconized by the laptop but not through the XP installation CD.


Are you using a Windows XP CD or a recovery CD? It could be that the XP installation CD can not find any SATA Drivers/controllers for your laptop.

According to some research try entering your BIOS F10 or however you get on and look for an option "Native SATA Mode" if you find it disable it and see will the XP installation work now.

Also see if you can find SATA/IDE emulation. (It might not be there)man this laptop is so freakin weird. I have an XP installation CD. tightened up the screws on the HDD. I havent ever seen an option "Native SATA Mode" on here. I looked all over and there isnt one. currently looking for IDE emulation thing thingi tightened the screws on the HDD. nothing. I looked for the "Native..." thing thing. nothing... looked for the emulator thing thing too and still.....nothing......im about done with this laptop. a real test of patience man. According to some more research this laptop originally came in vista?

Its 2am here and I really need to go, maybe some other staff will try to pick off where we left off

From what I read you might need to install a SATA driver for XP:

http://h20000.www2.hp.com/bizsupport/TechSupport/SoftwareDescription.jsp?swItem=ob-54270-1&lang=en&cc=us&mode=3&

Quote

This package contains the Intel Serial ATA (SATA) Advanced Host Controller Interface (AHCI) Controller Driver for the supported notebook models and operating systems. This package is used to create a diskette that is needed during a new operating system installation to ensure that the notebook hard drive is detected and usable for the installation.

1. Download the SoftPaq .EXE file to a directory on your hard drive.

2. Execute the downloaded file and follow the on-screen instructions.
A diskette containing the driver is created, and the driver files
are also made available at c:\swsetup\sp37005. If you choose to
cancel diskette creation, you will need to copy the driver files
to the chosen media.


To use the diskette during a new operating system installation, complete the
following steps (choose the procedure that matches the operating system you
are running).

IMPORTANT: This SoftPaq is ONLY required for use with a purchased retail
Microsoft Operating System CD or DVD. It is not needed if an HP supplied
Operating System CD or DVD is used. An HP supplied Operating System CD or
DVD has the Intel SATA AHCI Controller Driver included. Using this SoftPaq
with an HP supplied Operating System CD or DVD may result in a "blue screen"
event during the operating system installation.