Trying to install XP - hard drive damaged?

[lolage]

Hi, basically I bought a Windows 7 student 'upgrade only' disk. I was told that I would be able to put this onto a fresh hard drive and it would still work - so I did so to find out that it actually needed vista on it beforehand so my key diddn't work. Annoyingly I dont have a vista disk, only an 'upgrade disk from xp..

So the plan was to put XP on, then Vista upgrade, then Windows 7 legit!

However, when putting in the xp disk to format it, it got to 100% then bought up the following message:

Setup was unable to format the partition. The disk may be damaged.

Make sure the drive is switched on and properly connected to your computer. If the disk is a SCSI disk, make sure your SCSI devices are properly terminated. Consult your computer manual or SCSI adapter documention for more information.

You must select a different partition for Windows XP. To continue, press ENTER.

To be honest, only the first paragraph makes sort of sense to me, but even so I don't believe its damaged as its pretty new and was working fine up until I want to format it?

Any help would be greatly appriciated, I have already tried unplugging leads and plugging them back in to see if there was a loose connection.

Thanks, Ben.

 

[sjcf1]

Seems like a bit of a faf to get 7 installed that way...

If you had a SCSI disk you'd know about it - as its away from normal everyday computing, try using the windows 7 DVD to check the disk, the GUI on it is much more user friendly than XP's set-up. Unless I'm wrong you can view properties of the disk via chkdisk which might go some way to finding a fault with the drive.

Failing that have you got another computer - that boots that you could use HD tune to test the hard drive - if you beleive it is this that is causing you the issue that your having.

 

[Hagar]

Download a bootable linux live disk, that will check if the drive is visible, and you can format NTFS with many of them.