Cannot find HDD

[ben23]

Hard drive on my compaq notebook failed, so i got a new one at the local computer shop. The hard drive was $150 and they want another $30 to install it and $70 to install windows. Not going to happen. So i unscrewed the defective one and placed in the new one and pop in my windows xp cd. When i try to install windows from the cd, it claims that it cannot find any hard disk drives. So i booted up my BIOS and was like yo self detect HDD. But, driver does not support self detect.

What do i do now? Theres no way im giving any more money. Something tells me i have to partition space or something. If worse comes to worse i can give my comp to my computers teacher but he smells terrible. Any advice?

[Greg]

Read the geometry off the drive and plug in the numbers in bios.

Make sure the drive is jumpered correctly too.

[ROAR]

Another success story?

[vantim]

You also need to do some research and make sure your laptop supports the hdd you installed. There are limitations in the bios. For instance: if your laptop had a 2gb drive and you're trying to pop in a 60 gigger you're probably out of luck. If your drive was under 8 gb to begin with you'll need to get a hdd that is under 8gb.

Give us the specs of your laptop and we'll tell you if the hdd will work or not.