Partition Disappeared After Installing Vista 64

[Truthisone]

I still have the same system specs but I had to RMA several parts including the hard drive, so Vista had to be reinstalled.

I divided my drive into 3 partitions during setup. Of of the partitions and all the space on it is gone. 
It said during the setup that it was not an NTFS partition. I don't know how it got that way but it wouldn't let me reformat it. Then when Vista started up it says the partition doesn't exist.

Do I have to install Vista again

[Carbon Dudeoxide]

If you just installed Vista, I would do it again.

Otherwise, you may want to see what's in Disk Management.

[Truthisone]

The partition appeared in disk management but it had no name. It wouldn't let me name it or format it. I reinstalled Vista and had the same problem. So I threw on an old copy of XP I had and the problem was fixed. I don't get it.

[patio]

Was it ever compressed while runnung XP ? ?
Or encrypted ? ?

[Truthisone]

No it's not compressed or encrypted. I just did a standard XP install.

[patio]

History of what was on the drive and what tool did you partition with ? ?

It may very well have been the manuf. hidden partition that contained Vista and all your recovery software...
But since this is a guessing game we can carry on...

[Truthisone]

It was a brand new drive straight from newegg.com and I used the partitioning tool inside windows installation when it worked. I also tried Disk Manager but that didn't work.

[Aegis]

I used the partitioning tool inside windows installation when it worked.

What version of Windows?

[Truthisone]

What version of Windows?

XP home

[patio]

Use the drive manuf. utilities to partition and format the drive properly...
Windows is a crapshoot unless you are familiar with FDisk which would be my first choice here...

[Truthisone]

It was an OEM drive and didn't come with a utilities disk. I'll use FDISK if you give me some pointers

[Aegis]

What brand of drive is it?  Can you get utilities from the manufacturer's website?

[Truthisone]

My specs are in my specs. It is a Seagate barracuda 1.5 TB drive. I couldn't find any software that had to do with formating or setup on the website, I just found instruction, but that could just be me.

[Truthisone]

Update- I tried reinstalling Vista again. This time I created several partitions 1 MB in size and deleted the bigger ones. Anyway, don't really know how I did it but I got the partitions to the size I wanted and Vista installed.