Vista Installer Won't Recognize My Hard Drive

[thenotsothinman]

My Vista PC crashed and I had to format my hard drive. Now I can't get Vista install to see the hd. It shows up in the bios. It also works for storage if I use it as a secondary drive with both Vista or XP installed on a master drive. Also I was able to get XP SP3 installed on the drive. The hd is an SATA. I have tried getting the updated drives for hd and the motherboard but I really don't know what I should be looking for. My goal is to dual boot with Vista on the hd in question witch is 250GB and XP on my other 30GB drive so I can use my camcorder that is not compatible with Vista but that is a secondary concern. I would just like to get vista to install on the 250GB hd if anyone can help me.

[cguan_77]

have you checked the jumper settings of your Hard drive? try connecting only the 250gb and removing the other one.. check if vista will be able to detect your hdd...

[thenotsothinman]

Thanks for responding. If I only connect the 250gb hd vista installer will not recognize any hd to install. As for the jumper, it doesn't have one but it never did. The pc is custom built and came with vista installed. I have e-mail the guys that I got the pc from but have not heard anything back.

[cguan_77]

have you tried booting using win xp cd, just to check whether it can recognize the hd?

try to download UBCD4WIN... check if it will help
http://www.ubcd4win.com/

[thenotsothinman]

I have installed XP SP3 on the hdd and it work fine. I have even connected the hdd to a pc running vista and it is recognized and can be used as storage, but Vista installer still does recognize it.