XP Won't re-install

I can't get XP to re-install. Gives me the error "Setup cannot access this disk"
I've checked in the bios and it recognizes it.
Problem was xp would not boot so after running the repair and the recovery councel and even using a win98 boot disk to try to recover this NTFS system files via fixmbr, bootcfg, scandisk, etc. I gave up and tried to re-install.
This is where I'm at

Thanks,

Bud Z2

If your using more than one optical drive or an external unit ; disconnect them . Use only one internal optical drive when installing Windows . Sometimes Windows gets confused/lost with too many drives installed and directs itself somewhere else stupid like a floppy , etc ; you can usually tell this happens by a drive light (cd-rom, floppy , hardrive) staying on constantly .

BTW .... to the forums !

If xp stopped booting, there could well be a physical problem with the disk... the "cannot access this disk" error message when reinstalling may be related to that. Have you tried running any hdd diagnostic utils to check the health of the drive? If the logical contents of the drive are totally corrupted for some reason (and therefore messing up the install), doing a low-level format in the diagnostic util may fix this. If it's a physical problem, it could be time to get our your wallet and invest in a new hdd . That's what i'd try anyway. Good luck!

Binny

Binny,

Thanks, your answer sounded the most plausable. I have a new hd on the way but in the meantime I thought I would go to the western digital site and download the utilities.
Problem is I'm on my wife's pc now and she doesn't have a burner and the .zip utilt file is just a little large for a floppy so I'll just wait for the drive.
I'm sure that's what it is.

Thanks again,

Bud Z

Bud Z2 said:

Problem is I'm on my wife's pc now and she doesn't have a burner and the .zip utilt file is just a little large for a floppy so I'll just wait for the drive.

Click to expand...

There's a nice little thing called the "ultimate boot cd" and it contains loads of handy utilities including manufacturer disk diagnostic apps. I don't have a floppy drive in my setup, so I use that when I'm having disk issues. Find the link below.

http://www.ultimatebootcd.com/

All the best,
Binny.

Binny,

Thanks for the infor. I went to the Western Hard drive site and downloaded the utilities
file for my old drive, made a backup to floppys on my wifes machine so it would span floppy disk's (2) being the file was 1.87Mb then I inserted the first floppy in my machine and booted and lo and behold it booted to windows.
All I can think is there was something at the front of the first floppy that corrected my old drive.
Not going to shut it off until I get the new drive and make a clone of the old using Acronis True Image.Weird!!

Thanks,

Bud Z

I just had this exact sme problem with a WD SATA drive. It was detected in BIOS but not during winXP setup. The disk would not detect in my other machines as well. I tried everything. I ended up getting a warranty drive from dell. That one worked like a charm. First time I ever had a drive detect in BIOS and nowhere else.

I used a few utilities from WD that "erased" the drive. used some 3rd party programs but nothing helped.

i had this after running fdisk from a win98 disk, can you put the disk in another xp machine and try and format it from a working install?

lee

yes you can always put it in another machine to format it. Another thing you can try it to reset the MBR on the disk. do fdisk /mbr d: (or whatever drive it is)