I am unable to install Windows 2000 Server. I need help in the worst way. I have a new system with a clean, unformatted, unpartitioned hard disk. When I try to boot from the CD-ROM, It doesn't exactly boot. It tells me it is starting to setup Win 2000. After a few minutes it comes back and gives me a choice of installing, fixing an existing installation or quitting. I choose install, it comes back immediately with a screen that says "setup did not find any hard disk drives installed..." I didn't partition the drive or format it because I thought Windows 2000 would do this as part of the installation. Also, I don't want a FAT partition, which is what I understand FDisk does. Also, on startup, the computer tells me the type and identification of the hard drive, so the BIOS can at least find it. Any ideas what I should be doing here? System specs: IBM 30.7 GB PCI/IDE Hard drive, 256 megs memory, SoyoSY6BA+100 board, 700 MHz Pentium CPU, 52x CD-ROM, floppy, ATI AGP Video adapter, Netgear 10/100 ethernet adapter. Nothing else. No sound, nada.

some BIOS have trouble recognising drives beyond 8 GB. Flash your BIOS to a newer version. Otherwise...are you sure it is and IDE drive? Windows 2000 can't find SCSI drives usually because no driver was provided before setup began.

It turns out the problem was that the Soyo board uses a High Point HPT 370 chipset device driver that needed an upgrade. I got the BIOS update from Soyo. The setup was confusing me because Win 2000 asked If I wanted to install a SCSI or other Mass Storage Device and I kept answering no. The correct answer is yes and then put the Soyo/High-Point BIOS drivers on a floppy and install it. Now it is chugging along.

Hi Dick, I have both IDE and SCSI controllers installed on my PC with W2k, it works fine. The simple thing I think you should do is to run the DDO (disk manager) that comes with your HD and then you can format it using DOS options and run the FDISK, once you started the W2k setup your HD will be recognized and the setup will ask you where do you want to pleace the new installation, chose drive C:, after that you'll be prompted to format the drive C:, chose NTFS. After install the W2k, format all other drives as NTFS too. This is the best way !! Good luck. Andre.