My friend gave me his HP Pavilion laptop to repair for him. I turned on the computer and like he told me, \Windows\System32\Config\System was corrupt or missing. No big deal, I've dealt with it many times before. Standard procedure is a fresh installation of Windows XP. So I throw in the restore CD, and booted from it like normal. After a brief moment of loading I get prompted to press 'enter' to install windows xp. I press 'enter' and windows could not find a hard drive to install onto. So I go to the bios and it's not detected there either. I checked the plugs and the hard drive, both of which seem fine. Is my friend's hard drive beyond repair or am I doing something wrong?

Thanks in advance.

Jeremy

Assuming everything is where it's supposed to be hardware-wise, and if bios doesn't detect it, then you will need a new hard drive. If that doesn't work, then the computer is trash (except for versions of linuxes out there that will run from cd or flashdrives or whatver, which basically means the computer is crapola as there is not much you can do with that kind of linux).

Thanks for your input. I figured the same.