ok, heres the situation. i booted up an old laptop windows loaded then froze and nothing would work so i hard booted. this time it comes up os not found. I get my xp os cd to try to repair. it won't do it. so i try to reinstall the os. it goes thru everything i get past the eula and pick a partition to install it on then it immediately goes to set up failure. i switched hdd to see if i could install it on an old drive, but get the same message. any one have any clue what i can do to make it work so i dont have to buy a new one? thanks

When installing Windows delete all of the partitions until you only have an "unallowcated space" option. Then try to create a partition, format, and install Windows.

i'm not able to make it that far now. i tell it install os and i get stuck on please wait.

check the connectors of the hard drive to the motherboard I had a similar issue and it got resolved

ok, i reconnected the drive. now then i get to the 'which partition do you want to install this on' screen i tell it to delete the existing partition and it tells me it can't then tells me its going to shut down to prevent damage to the computer.

format the disk in another machine and try again
??

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