Windows XP Installation Failed-No HD Detected

[bmk91]

Need some insight.

After installing Windows XP Professional on several systems, this one is giving me grief.

The system is a K7S5A ECS mobo, 256MB of generic RAM, Athlon XP 1800+, DVD-ROM, Generic CDRW, 20GB HD(not sure of make).

Set BIOS to boot from CD, deleted old WIN 98 partition, created new partition, reformatted to NTFS, rebooted. XP began it's installation process, complete with all the messages about how wonderful and spectacular XP is. Approx 10 minutes into the installation process, the system shut down and restarted without the standard "Windows will restart in 15 seconds".

After the restart, the primary hard drive was no longer detected, and the system tried to find a cd-rom or scsi or floppy drive to boot from.

I restarted with the Win XP cd again, attempted to delete the partition and reinstall, but get the "No Fixed Disk" error. I tried to boot with a win 98 boot disk, and run fdisk, but yet again, I get the same error.

Will clearing the CMOS or updating the BIOS or both get the board to recognize this drive again?

I've checked the connections to the HD and the mobo. The hd is the only thing on that power lead, and the ide cable is secure. This drive ran for at least a year on this cable, so I don't think the cable is a problem.

Any input would be appreciated.

Thanks

[reboot]

Boot to a good startup diskette.
Fdisk the drive to remove all partitions.
Restart.
Run fdisk again, make the partitions, and format them FAT32.
Install Windows.
Change to NTFS if you like, AFTER it's installed.
If you can't fdisk the drive from the startup diskette, the drive may have failed.