How can i format my HP notebook, read carefully?

Question

My Notebook works usin PC Recovery Solution with Win XP Home Edition,I want to format it and install Win XP Professional, so when I boot from cd it loads all the files, and when i press enter to set up Win, it says " Win can not recognize any hard drive, make sure you have connected hard drive to your pc"

Help, how can i do it?

Answer 1

Seems to me that you need to run fdisk on your HD and remove any existing partitions and then recreate them. The existing partition may be encrypted, compressed, or require a third-party driver.

Answer 2

I'm not sure how familiar you are with computers, so forgive me if I go into unnecessary detail. :-)

1. Windows needs to have the "drivers" of your laptop's "hard-drive" to know how to talk to it. If it doesn't have these drivers during install, you have to provide them.

2. Find out what the make & model of your hard-drive are and then go searching for the drivers. Put these on a floppy disk.

3. Then, when you try to install XP Pro, there is an option to provide "mass storage drivers" (or something like that, it's been years). Select this option, then you will be able to put the floppy in and select the drivers, then go on with the installation.

One caveat, there are a million different possibilities why this answer won't work exactly. There may be some wrangling with how to actually do all this, but the basic issue is that your XP Pro CD doesn't have the drivers to talk to your hard-drive. Good luck figuring it out...

Answer 3

well u can do many thing first you can get a win98 stastup floppy or download it from www.bootdisks.com it a free prog to used if you got a floppy drive ...if u used this prog startup disk used fdisk then format c: then reinstall xp pro i hope u made a backup or files you want to keek if not have fun i hope this helps...also ck bios to make sure hd is id if it not you got prob..