[magic12]

I have an Alienware Laptop, which has been at a friends house for the past year. I got it back tonight and the first thing it said, "Operating System Not Found." I got my system disk out Windows XP 2, and attempted to reinstall it. The screen displayed that it was reading the disc, and when it got to "The following list shows the existing partitions and unpartitioned space on this computer. Use the up and down arrow keys to select an item from the list.
"To set up windows xp on the selected item hit ---enter
"To create a partition in the unpartitioned space----hit "C"
"To delete selected partition, press----"D"

(This is what showed up under the above statement)

Unknown Disk
(there is no disk in this drive)

Unknown Disk
(there is no disk in this drive)

Unknown Disk
(there is no disk in this drive)

Unknown Disk
(there is no disk in this drive)

I was unable to select any of the above anyway. When I hit enter....I got another message saying that Windows has to close or serious harm would be down to my computer.

Please advise as to what I should do.

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Are you even sure that there is a physical disk in the drive? Given that you haven't seen it for a year someone may have removed it. You could try another bootable CD such as a Linux disk to see if the drive is recognized. You can also go into BIOS to see if it's recognized there. Those would be the first things to try.

[Tyger]

Are you even sure that there is a physical disk in the drive? Given that you haven't seen it for a year someone may have removed it. You could try another bootable CD such as a Linux disk to see if the drive is recognized. You can also go into BIOS to see if it's recognized there. Those would be the first things to try.