Computer suddenly stopped finding hard drive when I tried reinstalling Windows.

[stewie-Y]

Hey guys. I have an old laptop here that was working fine, but I wanted to reinstall Windows. I inserted a Windows xp disk into an external disk drive that I have attached to the laptop via USB, I went into the BIOS and I set the USB CD drive to be the first boot device, and when I tried to install XP it said that it recognizes no mass storage devices.
When I try to boot regularly from the HDD, it shows the XP loading screen, but goes to a black screen. Any idea what happened?

[DaveLembke]

Either the HDD is junk, optical drive copied corrupt data, disc is damaged, or the driver for the SATA controller is missing to mount the drive to install the OS. Is this XP SP2 clean install or SP0 or SP1a etc? ( SP = service pack )

[stewie-Y]

It's Windows XP SP3.
By the way, it didn't install anything. It only booted into the CD and on the screen where it lets you pick your drive is when it displayed that it recognizes no mass storage devices.

[Lisa_maree]

Another post where there is no information on what "old laptop" you have. There is lots of reason why a hard drive that you are not booting from will not be detected by a windows install cd. But to narrow the possibilities the model of laptop would help.
Then I could check if it supports ACHI mode. to suggest one of the things that would cause your problem.