Installing xp operating system

hello,

• Turn off the laptop.
• Unplug from power if connected
  
• Disconnect the hard disk power supply and re-connect after a while.
• Now start the PC and run set up.

thanks!

Your laptop has a SATA hard drive and windows XP doesn't recognize those drives cause the operating system came out before those drive were made.

Follow these steps I found thru google to get windows xp sp3 to recognize your drive:

http://en.kioskea.net/forum/affich-39282-xp-can-t-recognize-hard-drive-for-os-install

You'll have to use a program to do this but people explain how to do it on that page plus the program is free.

You have to include your SATA driver into XP. Otherwise it wont detect your Hard drive. You may need a utility called nlite to do this.
I found this article very helpful to install XP on my inspiron
http://news.softpedia.com/news/Install-Windows-XP-On-SATA-Without-a-Floppy-F6-47807.shtml

if your asking to install XP on top of vista.. if you do not like vista, then ur listening to your friends who have no idea what their talking about because its awesome and when windows 7 comes out youll be stunned...this is verry easy if you have XP disc ready, restart your computer you need to wipe ur hard drive to get rid of the old operating system, first save any thing you want thus wiping hard drive saves nothing.... techniquly its still there but ya....put in disc of XP and run the disc to install XP,. ACTIVATE IT AND WALA

By your description either the drive has died or somehow the BIOS has been changed to not be able to see the drive. Can you run setup on startup to get into the BIOS? From there you should be able to see if the BIOS is detecting the drive. Mose BIOS setups have a selection to automatically detect the drive. I would try that.

It means the install cannot see or detect the hard disk and is caused by :-
Incorrect BIOS setting for the hard drive.
or
A faulty hard drive.
or
The hard drive is not seated correctly on the hard drive connector.

Test the hard drive in another laptop or attach the hard drive to an USB hard drive adapter and plug it into a working computer's USB port, if it see the drive as an external drive and you can copy and delete files to this drive then it is OK and the fault is with the laptop.

Try going in to the bios. I think it's power on and start tapping F2. See if your hard drive is there. If not, your hard drive died and you need a new one. If its there, try re-installing XP without formatting the drive. Hope you backed up your computer either way.

I beleive that you are trying to install retail versions of XP which will not be able to detect the Hard Drive in the Notebook as it is a SATA drive and Windows XP will not be having the drivers for SATA Hard Drives by default.
In this situation, I recommend you to check and disable the SATA Native support  option available in the BIOS.
Start the Notebook and start tapping the F10 key which will take you to to the BIOS Setup window.
In this, go to the System Configuration tab using the Arrow keys and select the option as Disabled next to SATA Native Support.
Press the F10 key again to save the settings done and exit BIOS.
Now, you should be able to use the Windows XP disk and install Windows XP Operating System in your Notebook without any issues.
By disabling the SATA Native Feature, the Hard Drive of the Notebook will be detected as a IDE Drive because of which we will be able to install XP without any issues.

Donot Re-Enable this feature in the BIOS again as the Operating System may not boot. Let the option next to SATA Native Support be Disabled.
Hope this helps...

hello. sir. i have lost sound from my lap top Compaq presario C700 after installing windows XP. kindly help me. my laptop is also showing pproblem during installation of hard drive for same driver, every time i turn on my laptop. i donot have the installation mother board for the same laptop

wow here is where to go to get this fixed
http://welcome.hp.com/country/in/en/contact_us.html or contact
Balu Doraisamy president HP India