Working on a friends laptop, the hard drive shows in bios but when trying to format it with windows xp it says there is no hard drive installed, it booted to the welcome screen before

If your laptop has a SATA hard drive then -
The problem is that XPinstallation CD does not have a SATA driver, unless you have a SATA drive on adisk etc. and can install the driver when XP asks for a hard drive driver then,XP cannot detect the hard disk and therefore won't install XP.The FIX.Go into the BIOS anddisable the SATA drive (enable IDE emulation), this will make XP think it is aIDE/PATA hard disk. Then you can install XP normally. When Windows hasbeen installed then install all the device drivers (including the SATA driver),then shut down and boot up and got into the BIOS and enable the SATA drive.

All you've got to do is:

1) Insert the new hard drive.
2) Press the F8 key as the laptop boots. This will take you into the BIOS.
3) Locate the disk drive priority setting in the bios.
4) Set Priority 1 to your CD/DVD drive and priority 2 to the 320GB hard drive.
5) Save settings and exit the BIOS. This should reboot your laptop.
6) Insert the Windows XP CD.
7) It should not start the setup as it recognises the CD.
8) I will recommend that you format the drive before you install, go along with the format (make sure it does a full format).
9) After the format it will reboot your system.
10) You will be prompted with a message like "Press any key to boot form CD", DON'T press anything otherwise it will start all over again.
11) Now it should start the install. Follow the on-screen instructions.

“No Hard Disk” error displayed on XP install (SATA drive versus ATA/IDE drive) The two most most popular types of hard drives in personal computers are ATA (also known as IDE hard drive) and SATA hard drives. Many newer computers have SATA hard drives installed, but your computer may have either an (older design) ATA/IDE hard drive or a (newer design) SATA hard drive installed.
After removing Vista, when you reboot your computer, a “No Hard Disk” error may be displayed if your computer has a SATA drive installed. To fix the “No Hard Disk” error, you may need configure your computer’s BIOS settings so that it can recognize the SATA drive installed in you computer. Reconfiguring your BIOS is typically not required if your computer has an ATA/IDE hard drives installed.

Step 1: Activate your computer’s BIOS menu. The first or second screen your computer displays on status may display which key (or keys) you must press to activate your computer’s BIOS menu. You can also look in the index of your computer’s manual for “BIOS” or you can try passing the [Del] or [F1] key when text is first displayed after powering on your computer.

Step 2: BIOS menus vary by computer, but there are seldom more than a few menu categories. Review the “Main” and “Advanced” menu categories to locate your hard drive setting. When you locate the hard drive setting, be sure to note the original drive setting in the bios so that you can restore the original drive setting if your new configuration doesn’t work.

Step 3: Change the drive setting to “IDE,” then save the BIOS settings (usually by pressing the [F10] function key then restart your computer.
If changing your BIOS hard drive setting to IDE doesn’t work, return to step one and restore the original hard drive setting

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Goto bios - disable sata operations and select hard drive type as normal, disable ahci, disable acpi

You need to format first. If install cannot see drive, drive maybe faulty, or need an F6 driver SATA.
www.custompcblog.com/.../installing-windows-xp-sata-hard-drive
Check out link above.
If you cannot, format and "See" the drive, then it is most likely faulty. To test you must get a SATA/IDE USB Dongle, they are a few dollars. Connect uo the harddrive you have taken out of the laptop, and connect up via the USB poet, on another PC. IF it installs and shows up, then the problem may lay with your laptop, however, at this point, if you want, and drive is blank or you don't want anything on the drive, use Windows, and Format the drive, NTFS, now. Then take it back to laptop and try to reinstall. IF it STILL will not "See" the drive, then the laptop is definitely faulty. if it does, continue on and install Windows. Remember to set BIOS to Boot from DVD first. and set back, at finish of install.

Well the formatting must have been different! try dropping the partition and format using the pc you are installing it on

Its true. the Bios or HDD driver wont allow you to install Win XP on it.. This BIOS is compatible with only Win Vista. The only easy way to do it is by creating 2 partitions while installing vista. once vista is installed- install XP with Dual boot and than format the vista partition.

hmmm try to make SATA disabled from your BIOS setup. Because windows XP SP2 don't have any SATA driver, its came up with only IDE.

Try to disable your SATA it will fix your problem.

Thanks
Iqbal

seems that it's a SATA drive and the drivers are not included in XP.
There are some tools available to include these drivers into the XP CD.
Search the net for 'xp-iso-builder' or 'n-Lite'.

This is not necessary if your laptop's got a floppy drive (i don't think so). Then the SATA drivers can easily be loaded by pressing F6 when booting from the XP CD.

try formating the drive using fdisk in fat32, you can find this program in windows 98/98se and Me them try instaling windows xp