Can't find HD after reformat

I just had to reformat my HD due to some malware that had made XP unstable. Other than missing drivers, the system boots fine. When you go to shut down the standby option is disabled. I thought that I might have made an error while reformating so I tried to reformat again from my XP installer disk and I get a message saying that it can't find the hard drive.

I'm not much of a hardware person, but I've reformated before without this problem. What am I doing wrong? :confused

 

I was hoping someone who knows more about this sort of thing would answer you because I doubt my answer is the right one. Only thing I can think of is that perhaps a cable has come loose inside your box. When you boot up the computer and watch the things that come up on screen, does it find your hard drive(s)? If you don't see that, it may only mean that your computer isn't set to run through POST (stands for Power On Self Test - basically that means it's going through a check list seeing what it finds and whether the things it finds are all working) or that if it does do POST, it isn't showing it on the screen for you.

It's a starting point, anyway.

 

Thanks, but that didn't do it. I'm taking the lack of response as a bad thing. Thanks anyway.