Laptop format problem

[VulgarHandle]

so, i've never run into this problem before

Friend has a laptop, Dell Inspirion 1721 and got some sort of virus, or data corruption... what a noob... but i digress....

he has his data backed up, not the problem, problem is trying to reload Windows Vista Home Premium

it boots to the disk, tell it my region/language info, agree to the agreement (that you have to agree, so really it's a.... i digress again)

then the problem hits, it says it can't detect the drive

so, being he had some disposable income, i had him order a new hd (bigger and faster of course), and while i was at it, had him order bigger faster ram

anyway, stick in the new hd, and wammo, same thing

tried loading Windows XP, same thing

any ideas?

p.s.-being i've never worked on a laptop before, so i did take the opportunity to gut it, then cleaned it, and put back together, same thing

[bigretard21]

You need to load specialized drivers during the install. You probably don't have a floppy though on the laptop so you might have to add/slipstream the drivers to the XP/Vista image you're using. If your current Vista disk isn't SP1, read this: http://www.mydigitallife.info/2008/02/15/how-to-integrate-and-slipstream-sp1-into-windows-vista-rtm/ on how to slipstream the service pack in.

Also, try updating the bios first, that might solve it for you and be the quickest solution.

[VulgarHandle]

ill try looking for drivers

i doubt it's the bios, as the bios does see the hd's