cannot format hard disk please please please help

[ynazir]

well unfortunately i made the mistake of buying the sony vaio ar 11m series and ive been regretting every second of it. well heres the problem the hard disk in the system is a sata 160 gb pre partitioned into 2 80gb by sony and i have windows xp media centre installed. but i want to clean install xp professional or vista on it and when i enter windows setup and go to the point where i select the partition onto which i have to install the os, i see no hard disks installed...the setup says that the hard disk is not present in the system. i have tried loading the sata drivers thru a floppy disk in the setup but it still does not pick up the drive. some one please help me as im on the verge of throwing my laptop frm the second story of my apartment building cuz its wayyyyy too slow and i dont want xp mce. thanks plz help

[kee-lo_]

Hi Ynasir,

I would put the SATA drivers on a CD - then you'll have less problems loading them on setup.

[ynazir]

Hi Ynasir,

I would put the SATA drivers on a CD - then you'll have less problems loading them on setup.

well i was told that the xp setup would only pick the drivers if they are installed on a floppy drive and they do get loaded with the floppy too....but still the stupid setup fails to recognise any hdd on the comp. its like sony has locked it or sumthin

[zzzcarol]

Yep O.K.

As your pc boots hit whatever to enter the BIOS setup.

Set your CD as your first boot option, IE boot from CD.

Leave your system disk XP or whatever in the CD drive and reboot.

You can format and do stuff from there.
Have fun.

[oftagel]

 .... and go to the point where i select the partition onto which i have to install the os, i see no hard disks installed...the setup says that the hard disk is not present in the system. i have tried loading the sata drivers thru a floppy disk in the setup but it still does not pick up the drive. 

I have exactly the same behaviour!!! (AR21M) Please help! There MUST be a way to install another OS!

[ynazir]

 .... and go to the point where i select the partition onto which i have to install the os, i see no hard disks installed...the setup says that the hard disk is not present in the system. i have tried loading the sata drivers thru a floppy disk in the setup but it still does not pick up the drive. 

I have exactly the same behaviour!!! (AR21M) Please help! There MUST be a way to install another OS!

actually i managed to get vista clean installed onto the system since it picked up the hdd's...but another thing i noticed was that i copied the AHCI drivers in the drivers directory onto a floppy and that made the xp recognise the hard disk but after formatting it n everything it asked me to insert the intel matrix storage driver in the floppy drive which i din know where to get from and how....and if i put any other floppy in the drive it just sorta failed to recognise the drive itself...as if there was no drive connected at all....wierd sh*t i dunno y sony had to make things so difficult for the users....my next laptop will definitely be an alienware...those systems r sick