No fixed disks present

Sounds like the very first thing you should do is check all of your physical connections. Make sure the HDD is attached (with the correct cable in the correct orientation) and powered.
If it is attached correctly, check BIOS settings to make sure the IDE channels are activated. Some BIOSes allow you to turn off IDE channels and replace them with other (presumably faster) HDD controllers.
If that doesn't help, make sure the drive is not physically damaged. Maybe place it in a different workingsystem to see if it is accessible.
Also check jumper pins according to the disk manufacturer's instructions.

Good Luck!!
o-o-o

What kind of drives are you using? If they are SCSI or IDE (or particularly RAID), the way to approach the problem is very different.

What OS are you trying to install? If it's Linux or one of the NT variants, you can partition the drive while in the install process (assuming your drives and the controller are working correctly).

So first, make sure your hardware is properly configured. Then boot with your boot disk. Make sure it has the drivers, etc for your CD-Rom drive set up. Then change to your CD and either begin your install or run the disk formatting utilities there.

A recent client had two Western Digital drives
in an off-brand box with an older motherboard.

The two drives were accidentally jumpered on
Cable Select, as well as being jumpered
Master and the other also jumpered Slave.
The EZ-Drive software was employed to
format them in the Automatic setting.

When I removed their CS jumpers, both drives
became invisible, due to the EZ-Drive
formatting software. I suggest you try several
different jumper combinations, until you move
onto the hard drive setting in BIOS regarding
whether you set LBA, LARGE, or AUTO as the
type of drive it is.

If all the above won't bring it back, the
controller card on the hard drive, or the platters
may be toasted.

I think the discussion about no fixed HDDs is all well and good but 90% of the time if I ask if there is a floppy disk in the drive the user says "who put that there it wasn`t there before.
We do have a high number of users using the same PCs and the simple aproach works well in a large number of cases.

Thank you for all the feedback I received in regard to my question. All responses were helpful in that they gave wonderful insight. I now know what to do next time I receive this error message. I didn't realize at the time that I was working withscsi drives and that the pins had not been set correctly. As soon as I reset the pins to master/slave instead of master/master, this worked. I wasn't sure why they had been set to this in the first place, but..........that's how it goes. I was then able to partition the drives and go on my merry way.

Thank you,

egutierrez