help me please

my friends pc started up and it could not find the operating system (vista home premium) tried to put new operating system windows 7 but i received this


no drivers were found , make sure the installation media contains the correct drivers ?

its not finding the hdd by the looks of things ,its a Advent laptop , any suggestions would be great

 

Start simple.
check all connections on the hard drive to motherboard.

 

how would i go about doing that ?

 

the laptop is the advent 5411 , what i need i think is the drivers for the SATA controller chip set. were would i get these as its the HDD thats not showing up when i go to put a new operating system on the laptop, could somebody link me up ?

 

One quick thing does F8 when first booting give you any of the Vista safe mode options?

 

SMART failure predicted on hard disk 2

warning back up your data and replace your hard disk drive

a failure may be imminent

thats what i got when pressing f8

 

I'm not sure about the HD 2 message since I believe that laptop only has one HD.

The SMART message is pretty clear. The HD is failing which explains why it isn't being recognized. I don't think it is worth trying to reinstall or repair Vista/Win7 on a HD with a SMART warning since it will be unstable at best.

You might try removing the battery and the power cord overnight and see if it boots up tomorrow. Sometimes a failing HD will boot up after a cool down and rest.

I think your friend has to replace the HD.