reformating

Hi I have just gor a new hard drive and a new copy of windows vista (legal copy) and i am having problems loading it on to the PC.
It starts and i enter the key but says there is no drive to load it on to, so i guess i have to format and partition the drive, now thats where i have got stuck.
I have got no floppy drive, so i have gone to command prompt and tried to remformat from there, but it shows an x:\sources>c:
I have typed in format C: and it asked for a current volume lable which i founf, but it then says in not the right one.
I have tried to FDISK, but it says its not recognized, so i'm stuck can someone please help I have reformated before and never had any problems.

Thanks

 

Before you do anything else you should check that your HDD is visible in BIOS, by pressing DEL or F12 when you boot up, (something similar, it should say - google for your motherboard manufacturer if you get stuck) and then looking at the IDE (or SATA) devices.

You shouldn't need to format a brand new HDD (maybe for a Windows install but the installer will do it for you), so it is more than likely that you haven't connected your new hard drive correctly.

What type of drive is it, IDE or SATA? Do you have any other hard drives connected to the computer?

 

hi the drive is IDE, i have checked the BIOS, and as far as i can it is picking it up.
It goes well until it windows looks for the drive to put vista, I had expected it to run a set up from start
thanks for any help you can give

 

It also said i need my current volume lable for drive c, when i found this an entered it it said an incorrect volume labe was entered for this drive

 

What version of Windows do you currently have installed? You should just be able to right click the drive in My Computer (I'm presuming it is visible in My Computer?) and select 'Format...'

Presumably you have another hard drive connected to the computer as well? Is it on the same IDE channel (cable)?

 

this is a new hard drive so nothing on it at all no other hard drive fitted, this hard drive is fitted to the IDE cable
I have now tried loading XP back on but it just goes round in circles, it is reading the CD/DVD that i load, but nothing is going to the hard drive?

 

Okay. Is the HDD set as master?

If you have another PC available to you, download a Linux LiveCD (such as Ubuntu), boot into that and format the HDD from within Linux using an application such as 'GParted' (it should come with Ubuntu).

I'm not sure why FDISK didn't work if the HDD is being detected in BIOS..

 

Thanks everyboduy for your help, but i have been able to sort it on my own in the end. I reloaded Windows XP, then once that was done I tried vista, it would not allow an upgrad, and loaded a clean load of vista. so all working OK now