anybody on? trying to partition drive

or, more correctly, my friend's drive.

so, he got a comp w/a preloaded 160 gig drive but wanted to partition it, and apparently screwed something up.
so, at this point, it looks to me like we have a clean drive w/a 30 gig partition as the c drive, but can't seem to install windows on it.
when I run setup in dos it tells me that this program can't be run from dos, and when I boot off the cd and run the windows setup it scans the disk for partitions and presents me w/a list comprised of basically nothing -- like it can't see any drves or partitions to install on.
when I hit an arrow key to scroll this list I get an error message that windows has detected a problem and it locks up right there.

anybody have any idea what's going on?

I can switch to the c drive in dos --- it's 30 gig and has been formatted.
think the total contents are command.com.

fdisk (from a boot floppy?) to clear away all partitions, and then create partitions within the text-based portion of the Windows installer?

What an odd problem...

yeah we did that.

i fdisked his original partiton attempt, which I think might have been one giant partition comprised of the whole drive, and then created a new partition w/that.

it seems to check out ok except when I try to install windows.

I find it a bit odd that I can't run setup out of dos --- I'm tempted to copy the cd contents over to the harddrive, but I'm not sure what difference that would make.
also have windows on dvd but it doesn't read the dvd player, so I'm just using this windows xp cd.
even if I could run setup, I think I might just get the same problem as when I boot off the cd -- no drives found.

I checked bios and there's a hd in there...

he has also been using some kind of utility which might have created a temp 2 meg ramdrive in there, but I'm not sure what difference that would make.

If you're trying to run setup.exe on the CD from DOS, it won't work. :o

From DOS (floppy boot?), try:
A:\> X:
X:\> cd I386
X:\I386> WINNT
(where X is the letter of the drive that has the CD)

Can you try deleting (and not recreating) partitions in fdisk and let the Windows installer handle partitioning?

Of course, you should wait for someone else that knows more than I to respond...but that's what I'd do.

that's a good idea about the windows installer, and I was a little suspicious about running the cd from dos, so I figured I'd copy the cd over to the hd and try that way, but I need to make a boot floppy w/cd support because I can boot from cd but otherwise can't see the drive in dos.
think I might just try the fdisk again and see if windows installer works any better.

Don't think there is a way to run the WinXP installer successfully from DOS.. It's a bootable CD so you should just boot up from the CD. o_Ô

But if the drive isn't visible on the windows installer. Odd. Only reason I can think of for that is the drive is on a RAID/SATA controller, but I don't think DOS would see it either then.

Did the WinXP setup find the disk when all the partitions were removed?

Try doing a full format (ie. low level one) to the disk by using one of these. Maxtor's proggy atleast can do the low level format, in two different variations too, 150MB from the start of disk which should be enough to wipe the partition tables and other junk.

well, I think it's a sata drive -- is that an issue?

problem is, when I boot up the cd and run the setup , it loads a bunch of install files, asks me to agree to the bs, shows me my cd key, then presents this list of partions -- containing no partitons.
when I try to do anything at this point it gives me this extensive 'error found - installation is shutting down to avoid damaging your computer' message and locks up.
I'm pretty sure my friend has installed off this cd before.

Yes. WinXP installer doesn't come with drivers for SATA controllers and thus can't find the drive.

Early on the install, it should say something in lines of 'Press F3 to install third-party driver' on the bottom of the screen, hitting F3, or whatever key it was, I don't remember. Then it should ask for a disk, get the SATA controller's driver (probably available from motherboard manufacturer) and give that to Windows. The disk should now be seen on the installer.

Odd, my copy of XP installs onto my SATA drive without the need for extra drivers...:/

I'm leaning towards the sata drivers thing right now --- maybe you already had them loaded when you tried to install xp.

http://www.michaelstevenstech.com/XPpro3setup.jpg
at this point ^^^ the box just lists 4 'unknown blabla' w/no vlaues whatsoever.
no recognized drives, partitions or even unpartitioned space.

edit:
yeah, ok --- just hit f6 when prompted to load the 3rd party drive stuff and it says that windows cannot detect the hd in there now and I can slap a manufacturer's floppy in there.
now, to find some sata crap to d/l.....

Depends a bit on WinXP, mine didn't install automatically atleast. Prebuild computer manufacturers prolly add all the drivers they need to their recovery/windows install CDs, and probably WinXP with slipstreamed SP2 could have some extra drivers as well.

how sweet it is!
loaded sata crap from dell and unpartitioned space detected!
can now create partition.


thanks, all!