Windows Cannot Find Hard Drive in Reformat, Can in Normal Boot?

I'm writing to you right now from my computer. I am running Windows XP SP2 normally, and booting from the one hard drive I currently have installed. No problems there.

Unfortunately my computer has several registry problems (none having anything to do with the BIOS), and reformatting is easier than fixing them. I backed up everything, and now I'm ready to reformat.

However, when I put in the Windows XP SP2 disc (the exact same one that I used to install windows on the computer originally) and try to boot from it, it tells me that it cannot find any hard drives and therefore cannot continue.

I don't understand, I'm working off of that hard drive right now, as I'm typing this. It can find the hard drive under normal boot operation, just not when I try to reformat. How can I fix this?

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There is a small chance you are running into a similar problem that I had when I had to reformat my system.

Go into your BIOS and check the HD configuration. If it says it is a Raid setup, but you do not have a Raid controller (some systems come this way be default, but they forget to change the BIOS in the factory to a non-Raid system) and you only have 1 HD (meaning you do not have a Raid system) the disk you have to restore your system is looking for that Raid controller. As it is not going past the BIOS.

To fix it I had to change the BIOS to a non-Raid configuration. Then the reformat process went off as it should.

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Without specifics I would bet this is likely due to your computers SATA HDD controller not being recognized by the windows installer. When it first starts up you might notice a little thing at the bottom saying "to load 3rd party SCSI drivers press F6" or something similar to that. F6 is the part I remember. You need to put your SATA drivers floppy (should have come with your system or more specifically motherboard) into the disk drive and load them off that. Then windows will recognize the HDD. This is of course a guess.
Are you using any kind of raid/SCSI drives. If so you will need the drivers when you reinstall. It should give you the option to find the drivers(if you have them on a floppy). Select them and the install will continue. It is booting normally because the OS already has the drivers installed but when you try to reinstall it needs the drivers for the hard drives.

DO NOT FLASH YOUR BIOS. That is not required at all for this. You just need the raid controller driver.

I am assuming that you have a Dell Precision Workstation 380(going by the photo's).This should be what you need. Dell has the drivers for the raid controller. You will need to download these to a floppy or a USB drive. When you start the install you should see the option to press F6 to install those drivers. Browse to where the drivers are and then the installation will continue. Here is a link to Dell's site that should be able to help you.

http://support.dell.com/support/download...

If the link doesn't work just go to dell's site and enter your service tag. From there you want to go to downloads and find the SCSI RAID controllers. I believe that there are 2. Since I don't know which one you have download both and you should be all set.
I understand that you have two hard drives one boot up fine and you want to format the other, if this is the case right click on my computer, click on manage,click on disk management, when you see the partitions right click on the one you want to format then click format. that should do it.

if this is not the case,perhaps you should rephrase the question.
I don't want to over complicate, so I'll just say you need to flash your bios. Go google the term and your motherboard manufacturer. And don't mess with raid unless you know what you're doing and have more than one harddrive.
make sure you have the pins in the back of your hdd as slave or master, or select, which ever applies as you do your changes!!! probably it doesnt reconizes it when you switch that without changing the pins.
this is a dell computer, yes?

its running a serial ata drive SATA?

you will need the disk for the drivers for your sata controller in order to run the windows xp reinstall disk.

if you go to the dell site and go to support downloads you can put in your service tag number and find all the stuff for your computer.

you will need all the drivers if you don't have the drivers disk, but for the SATA controller you will need the sata/raid controller driver.

you need to put this on a disk to load when you try to install windows. you will see the option to hit F6 "i think" to install third party raid drivers.

good luck

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