OK so here we go. i have right now Windows XP Pro on my computer, and theres a lot of bugs and crap and i dont want to deal with it. so the simple solution would be to do a clean sweep of my hard drive and start from scratch. there is nothing on there that i want to keep very badly, so dont bother talling me to back anything up. now here is where the real problem is. in the past formating was just as easy as popping the CD in and following the on screen instructions. only problem is that Windows does not recognize me hard drive this is what it says: "setup did not find any hard disk drives installed in your computer. make sure ant hard disk dirves are powered on and properly connected to your computer, and that any disk related hardware configuration is correct. this may involve running a manufacturer-supplied diagnostic or setup program. setup cannot continue. to quit setup, pres F3" and so its not that easy. now the thing is that i can log into windows no problem (aside from all the bug n crap) and access the hard drive. also while starting up the computer gives me a message telling me that it recognizes the drive: "Primary Master : ST380817AS 74GB UDMA 6 Secondary Master : <SATA device not found>" I'm pretty sure this means that the computer recognizes the Hard drive. well thats all i really have about this problem.

when you boot up the pc, press the button for boot options, usually F2 but it could be different on your pc. In the boot options menu select "start in safe mode with command prompt" when in command prompt type format C:\. this will nuke your drive, after which set BIOS to boot from cd, pop the install disk in and proceed.

is this guaranteed? cuz on some other forums people have told me that i need a certain controller for my mother board (or something like that) because i have a sata drive, and i'm using XP Here's a url to said other forums: http://forums.cnet.com/5208-4_102-0...