I have a laptop which win xp was running. Recently when i try to boot up the machine it tries to logon and switches off, then tries to restart but always switches off. I thought probably it cannot find the boot.ini file or may be corrupted. I used safe mode, LKGC, command prompt to start up the system. That did not work. So i bought a new win xp cd to install win xp on the machine. when i tried to boot from cd.. It ask if you want to install a fresh copy or repair, when i tried any of the above, it says press f3 to quit cannot find hard drive, but there is a hard drive on the laptop. Can someone please advise if this is a virus or somethinmg else. thanks

I would power off the machine and remove the battery. Remove the hard drive and then reinsert it. Put the battery back in and power up the machine. How old is the computer? Life's more painless for the brainless.

Sounds like... 1. the partition might have gotten corrupt and the laptop just doesn't see it. 2. or you need to set the laptop sata setting to compatability mode or disabled. If it's #1, try booting up in from the cd and going into the repair console. Try running CHKDSK C: /R or FIXBOOT or FIXMBR. If it's #2, try booting from your cd and try the inplace install again.