Help Needed Badly Please with installation

[WakeoftheBunt00]

Ok well this post is not actually for me but for my boyfriend. He is having major computer issues so I said I will help him but posting the info he gave me on forums.

80 gig HD with a XP on it that is no longer valid, it was installed just to issue a files backup session, in fear of losing data.

now owning a proper legit CD version of XP pro service pack 2, and i wanted to formatt the drive for a clean install, so i took the the BIOS battery out, and waited 10 mins as someone suggested at a tech site (to reset bios to default), placed it back, and put the XP CD in and restarted with it as boot drive.

It gets to the setup menu, and then offers [enter[ ..... [R] ..... or the other...now i know what to do coz ive used 'Enter' before on past XP installs successfully to get to formatt steps, but this time it told me it read NO Hard-Drive, but its there, and connected, because when i place it as boot preferance in BIOS, the existing copy on there load up windows like normal, why wouldnt it read the HD on the XP disk menu?

::Comp Specs::
Processor : pentuium 4 3.0gig
Memory : 1gig ram
Motherboard : asrock 880 dual-pro
Hard-drive : 80gig Western digital sataII
Graphics Card : 256mb geforce card

nothing else attached yet (sound card and such)

Does anyone have any suggestions I can pass on for his computer to run again?!?!? I would greatly appreciate it.

[mjc]

If there is absolutely nothing on the drive that is needed, why not grab the Western Digital utilities and wipe the drive completely clean?

Also, since you've reset the BIOS have you gone back in and checked to see that the SATA setup is correct? Some boards default to the IDE channels...or do something like disable SATA...or something equally silly.

[WakeoftheBunt00]

all right thank you for your help

[WakeoftheBunt00]

Well there are things needed though, on that computer

[Sylvander]

"it was installed just to issue a files backup session, in fear of losing data"
Don't use Windows [MS Backup] for making backups; make image backups of the partition contents using a 3rd party utility.
The free trial copy of "Image for DOS" [IFD][from TeraByte] on the [FREE] "Emergency Boot CD" [EBCD] will make an image backup of ANY KIND of partition...But the free version must make the backup to a FAT[32] partition, and the free version cannot make that on an external USB HDD; it must be on an internal drive partition [a 2nd (borrowed, or bought?) HDD?].
Once the backup image file is made and saved, the [FREE] TBIView (http://www.terabyteunlimited.com/utilities.html) [also from TeraByte], can be run from within a Windows installation to [rapidly] restore any chosen number of folders/files/whole partitions; and they can be restored to any location.
The paid version of IFD can backup to [and restore from] Optical disks, USB drives, internal HDD's, or whatever.

Once the backup is made you could do almost anything you like with the original HDD.
You could use the free KILLDISK (http://www.killdisk.com/downloadfree.htm) to zero-fill the whole drive, or any number of chosen partitions.

1. How to make a free “Smart Boot Manager” floppy
http://www.pcguide.com/vb/showthread.php?t=41498
This makes it easier to boot a chosen drive [particularly the one holding the EBCD].

2. How to make a free EBCD bootable CD
http://www.pcguide.com/vb/showthread.php?t=41485
This has a number of useful utilities included including "Image" [for DOS, by Terabyte] & "File Manager".