A big problem, need help

Well, it all started when i wanted to switch from Vista to XP. When i plugged in the XP installaton disk, in loaded up, but then said: Setup cannot find any hard disk drives, the setup cannot continue. My friend used some linux thingy on my computer and deleted my hard drive and created a new one, but after that nothing worked at all! There is a special button that i need to press while boot up to recover my system to factory standart, idon;t know what it is, can some1 tell me please. i have a Toshiba Satellite A200.

 

I'm not sure which button it is for your laptop, but it is likely an F key. There are only 12 of them so process of elimination worst case scenario.

But I can tell you right now that the problem you were having with the Windows installation not finding your hard drive is because your hard drive is SATA. To install XP you need to insert a driver not included with the install discs.

What your friend did was most likely deleted the drives partitions and reformat it. That may have eliminated the possibility of recovery via an F key... If he wasn't careful to preserve the recovery partition.

To integrate the SATA driver needed into your XP disc use a program called nLite. You can download it here:

http://www.nliteos.com/

This is your SATA controller driver:

http://downloadcenter.intel.com/Detail_Desc.aspx?ProductID=2101&DwnldID=9727&lang=eng

This is a quote from another user with your laptop explaining how he extracted the driver from the Intel down load:

 

And while you are slipstreaming the SATA driver, also add in all the other drivers for that computer and SP3 for XP. It's well worthwhile slipstreaming a custom installation CD (with SP3 it might need a DVD) because at the end of the installation you will have a computer ready to run withthe right drivers and an p-to-date version of XP.

John