im tryin to reformat my desktop....

after the cd boots and goes through its processes for a few min i get the following message:

"Setup did not find any hard disk drives installed in your computer. blah blah blah
To quit setup, press F3"


what now? (besides pressing F3, thx)

5/30/2006 11:12:10 AM

Make sure everything is plugged in tight and make sure the drives are recognized in the BIOS.

5/30/2006 11:25:55 AM

perhaps a jumper is set incorrectly on the hard drive?

5/30/2006 12:41:06 PM

if you've had the computer for a few years its possible the hard drive is bad

either way, the error you are getting could be a few possible things:

1. the hard drive is damaged, will not power up, therefore is not being detected by the install...one way to check on this is to go in your bios setup at computer start (probably hit F1 or something to "Enter Setup" or "Go to BIOS Setup"...then you can see if the hard drive is detected in there

2. as was mentioned earlier, its possible that either the power and/or data cables that plug into the back of your hard drive have become loose or disconnected...if you recently were inside the computer case, this is a possibility

3. a jumper incorrectly set is another possibility, although i think it would still detect the drive, although the master vs. slave setting could be an issue

you could also try plugging the hard drive into another computer as a secondary drive and see if you can view/access data on it

you might need to get a new hard drive though

5/30/2006 12:46:10 PM

is your harddrive(s) using RAID? Are they connected to a SATA controller?

if so, you may need to go to your computer or motherboard manufacturer's website and download the driver disk to put on a floppy so windows can use the correct drivers to detect your hard drive

At the very first part of the windows setup it asks you to "Press F6 to install 3rd party drivers", thats what you'll need to do

what are the details on the computer?

5/30/2006 12:58:54 PM

thanks for all the help so far.....

im not at the house now, and cant remember shit for the details of the build

i have no however been inside the machine in a while

i started having major problems with it loosing a socket or something a few weeks back, i kept getting a message that my TCP/IP was not recognized/installed....being about 2 years old i decided to just reformat and start over

for the most part, other applications have been working as they should...i have just been using the machine as a media center since then, music, dvds, burning discs, etc

ill try to post up the other details of the build when i get back to the house

5/30/2006 1:11:32 PM

first check the what MiniMe said

Quote :

"is your harddrive(s) using RAID?"

And since your not sure about your setup, it's the most likely cause at this point.

5/30/2006 1:26:33 PM

IDE Disk?

If you're on any type of SCSI or Raid controller there is a good chance that Windows does not have a driver for your controller and you'll need to load one by pressing F6 when prompted or else you'll never see the disk during install.

5/31/2006 4:34:56 PM