Laptop troubleshooting forum: Windows setup cannot see hard drive

How do you intend to get XP to use that?

http://h20000.www2.hp.com/bizsupport/TechSupport/SoftwareIndex.jsp?lang=en&cc=us&prodNameId=3357378&prodTypeId=321957&prodSeriesId=3357377&swLang=8&taskId=135&swEnvOID=1093 (drivers)

http://h20000.www2.hp.com/bizsupport/TechSupport/Document.jsp?objectID=c00810334 among others note recovery media which should avoid you learning about XP, SATA, and the troubles folk report.

But to write more means I would be duplicating the web.

Tell more.
Bob

You got it Bob. It was a SATA problem.

In the BIOS there is an entry that says "SATA native mode" and it defaults to "enabled." I changed it to "disabled" and the XP install is working fine now.

Thanks very much.

I have a HP Pavilion dv2500 and recently my hard disk failed, and I was forced to purchase a new one. I physically installed the new drive, and went to install Windows XP Pro. It previously had Windows Vista Home Premium, but seeing as it hogged all of my system memory, I decided to go with XP Pro from another computer that I previously used.

The setup does not see the new drive, and reading through this post, I looked through my entire BIOS setup and there is no setting for the hard drive configuration. I also ran the Hard Disk Self Test and it passed, so now im am at a loss.

Is there anything else that I can try? Or am I forced to send it to a technician to have them set it up for me...?

I have a similar problem, my HDD died so I replaced it with a new one. Bought Windows 7 Ultimate, as I have it on my desktop and felt it was as good as time as any to ditch Vista from my laptop, but setup just won't find the drive.
I've taken it out and reinstalled it a dozen times but still no luck. I've even tried another spare HDD in it just in case the new one was faulty.

Any ideas?

I mistakenly thought that it was because it was it was shown in "boot devices" but, after running SeaToolsDos and then checking through "diagnostics" in BIOS it turns out that it isn't.
It states, in "BIOS - diagnostics" that there is "No IDE Drive" which is (kinda) correct as my HDD is SATA.
I can't find any way of changing the BIOS so that it looks for SATA instead of IDE.

Thanks, I'll give that a try. Though I'm pretty sure the previous HDD was SATA also, well, the new one slotted in as easily as the old one came out at least.

I've never used LInux before, any recommendations on which Linux CD I should download as a Google search throws back thousands of results?