XP not detecting hard drive

[Iceman]

right click my computer > manage and then goto 'disk management'.<BR><BR>see if you can do anything from there...he might just not have formatted it properly so it might need formatting

[Raziel]

Ok, my friend just reformatted and reinstalled Windows XP, and he has two hard drives, but one of the hard drives isn't showing up in My Computer. He told me that it shows up in Device Manager, and the hard drive is enabled. He's trying disabling it, restarting, and then re-enabling it again, but that hasn't helped. Any suggestions?

[crazygoat]

makes sure its in a format windows can use (ntfs or fat32) linux partions etc will not show up in my comp but will show up in device manager

[grafton26]

if the disk wasn't already fat32 or some other windows/dos format you will need to repartition the disk, if the winxp disk didn't want to deal with it you will need to use the winxp version of fdisk (diskpart) it can be completely wiped with the "clean" command and then you need to create your partitions. the program i have found to be a real pain in the ass and i only use it to wipe a hdd, then i boot the computer off th winxp cd and go as far as the partitioning stage (easy) i then create the required partitions and procede ro the next stage. from there you take the cd out and hit reset to reboot. Once fully booted into xp simply double click on my computer and format the new partitions. this might not be the correct way of doing it, But it works for me.<img src="i/expressions/face-icon-small-happy.gif" border="0"><img src="i/expressions/face-icon-small-happy.gif" border="0">