Compaq Presario 2100 does not recognize hard drive

[marionffavp]

I have a HP Compaq Presario 2100 series laptop that will not recognize the IDE hard drive that is brand new. It has been installed correctly and it is not being reconized. I am reinstalling Windows XP Professional on it. So far I have had no luck at all on fixing it. :sad: I am flustered and thinking about thowing the thing in the trash! The CD drive works as it will boot from a CD. When I try to Windows XP back on it, I get an error that says that "Setup did not find any hard disk drives installed in your computer". I don't know what to do or where to go from here. This computer does not have a floppy disk drive, so that won't work.
Any help would be greatly appreciated.:sad:

[goldeagle2005]

Your sysptoms indicate that the hard disk itself is faulty. Check it on another computer, and if it doesnt work there, return the HD for a new one.

[DocDizzle]

Hey
i'm having the same problem Marion is having. The problem is that the HDD works just fine. it's been working the entire time, it's just that when i try to install Windows XP, the HDD is suddenly not recognized. Somehow i think it's not the HDD, but Vista being too clingy...

either way, help would be nice still

[Spriggan]

you could use a third party tool like a linux rescue disk wuth Qparted or Fdisk even to reformat the HDD and knock out Vista.