Okay so I've been searching for the past couple of days the solution to this topic, and everyone seems to have a different answer, and none of them will work for me.
My sister recently brought over her brand new HP Pavillion dv6 running Vista with a 320gb seagate hd, and asked me if I could uninstall vista and install XP.
And thus the problems began.
I had slipstreamed a SATA driver onto the XP installation disk, but my step-dad got to the pc before I did (he knows more about this stuff than me, but he didn't think to do a bit of research before attempting it). He's been fiddling around with it and now the situation stands as follows
He wiped the drive
Now whenever the computer is turned on, the screen reads 'Invalid Partition Table' so as far as I can see, the pc is unable to read the hd, and it doesn't show up in BIOS
Have tried many boot disk etc. programs
Bought an hd enclosure, and the hard drive is not recognised by the three other computers in the house, it doesn't show up in disk management, but the light on the enclosure turns on so it's getting power (all running XP sp3)
I'm not exactly knowledgeable in this area but is it possible that when he wiped the drive, he wiped the driver for the drive and now the computer can't read the drive with out the driver? I suspect that may be why none of the other computers will read it because they don't have the drivers?
also, we had another spare second hand SATA drive that we tried with the same result or lack thereof
I thought maybe I should try install the XP with the sata driver onto one of the working computers and then see if it will recognise the drive, I suggested this to my step dad but he seems reluctant to do anything about it.
Oh and the laptop didn't come with any discs so we don't have the copy of vista either.
I'm lost, I feel like I've tried everything short of taking it to a shop but if anyone has any suggestions it would be greatly appreciated
My sister recently brought over her brand new HP Pavillion dv6 running Vista with a 320gb seagate hd, and asked me if I could uninstall vista and install XP.
And thus the problems began.
I had slipstreamed a SATA driver onto the XP installation disk, but my step-dad got to the pc before I did (he knows more about this stuff than me, but he didn't think to do a bit of research before attempting it). He's been fiddling around with it and now the situation stands as follows
He wiped the drive
Now whenever the computer is turned on, the screen reads 'Invalid Partition Table' so as far as I can see, the pc is unable to read the hd, and it doesn't show up in BIOS
Have tried many boot disk etc. programs
Bought an hd enclosure, and the hard drive is not recognised by the three other computers in the house, it doesn't show up in disk management, but the light on the enclosure turns on so it's getting power (all running XP sp3)
I'm not exactly knowledgeable in this area but is it possible that when he wiped the drive, he wiped the driver for the drive and now the computer can't read the drive with out the driver? I suspect that may be why none of the other computers will read it because they don't have the drivers?
also, we had another spare second hand SATA drive that we tried with the same result or lack thereof
I thought maybe I should try install the XP with the sata driver onto one of the working computers and then see if it will recognise the drive, I suggested this to my step dad but he seems reluctant to do anything about it.
Oh and the laptop didn't come with any discs so we don't have the copy of vista either.
I'm lost, I feel like I've tried everything short of taking it to a shop but if anyone has any suggestions it would be greatly appreciated