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by s.w.kraft

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I have a dilema: I have built a new computer which is P4 based. I had an old computer that was AMD based and which I installed Win XP Pro. I now have the new computer built with my old hard drive and windows designated as the primary boot disk. When I try to boot, the system says that I need to have a bootable disk installed and won't read the "old" disk and therefore, the BIOS says that a primary hard disk is not available. I installed a CDROM reader and put a WinXP Pro disk in it. I designated this as the primary bootable disk and it starts to install WinXP. However, because I don't have a hard disk installed under the BIOS, I am wondering how WIN XP can be installed and where? The reason that I am re-installing WinXP is that the store where I bought the components said that I cannot use an old formatted and WinXP loaded disk that I have to start over because Windows "maps out" the hardware and dowsn't recognize my new hardware???I have an idea that if I boot from a floppy disk, I can re-format the hard drive but don't know if the hard drive will be available! Anyway, any info. will be appreciated. Thanks in advance, Sid Kraft

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by mcs-1

Not sure if I'm reading this correctly or not ... if you are going to wipe your drive and re-install then I would just boot with a Win98 floppy or something, run FDISK and wipe your partitions and then let XP create its partition and install.
Now, if you say the BIOS doesn't recognize the hard drive, you have a computer problem, not a Windows problem. Assuming the drive is newer, and obviously the motherboard is ... setting your BIOS to Auto should pick up the drive. If this is not the case then I'd start searching the source of your "BIOS not reading the HDD" problem - because it isn't Windows.

by glenn

You might want to check the cable from the mother board to your hard drive to see that it is connected at both places or replace it. Also if you have another hard drive, see if the bios detects it. If your bios settings are correct, autodetect should see a hard drive. If it sees another HDD and still not the questionable drive, download a HDD disk utilitiy from the drive manufactorer's website. Maxtor has one that will test other brands as well (maxtor.com)

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