Reinstalling Windows XP after using Partition Magic to format drive

I have a desktop with 2 hard drives - a 20 GB that came w/ the system, and a 40 GB that I added on later. I had win XP installed on the 20 GB drive and when that started crapping out on me, I installed Win XP on the 40 GB partition and it was a dual boot for a while. Yesterday, I used Partition Magic to format both hard drives. now the only thing that is recognizeed by a drive letter is the floppy drive. no matter what I put in either CD rom drive makes it do anything, i've rebooted w/ a Win XP Pro, Win XP home, Win ME, Win 98 SE and Red Hat 9 disk in and all I get is black screen and blinking curser in corner and nothing else. the only thing that makes my computer do anything is if I use the Partition Magic boot floppys that I made - and all that does is start Partition Magic and I can modify the drives (move, change size, change ntfs/fat32, etc...) and thats' it.
when i am at a command prompt - the only recognizeable drive letters are a: and b: which both show the contents of the floppy drive when "dir"'d; and I tried all other letters - nothing.
i'm trying to get Win XP Pro installed on the 20 GB drive, any help would be eternaly greatful.
Thanks,
melody426@speakeasy.net

Haven't had this exact problem before - though I'm assuming that you can do what I did when I accidentally deleted my D: drive.

So, after Partition Magic has started go to "New Partition" [if you have that option] and follow the on-screen prompts. It worked for me, but like I said, I didn't have exactly the same problem: I didn't delete both drives.

Alternatively, whack open the user manual included with the Partition Magic CD. Page 16 "Rescue Disk Main Window", seems is a good place to start. But in this image, both hard drives appear visible in the Disk Map (center) so I'm guessing that your getting something different?

Also, apparently there should be an "Undo Last Change" item under "General" in the menu bar?

Hope this helps,

Mark.

When this guy had told me partitioning worked better than using whole disk space, I'd made partitions by his guidance, but, when tried to download XP HE after that overwriting W 98, I didn't have enough disk space in the one to do any saving.

But, had noticed I was smar with XP by installing it with the NTFS format, as when put 98 back in, it asked if I wanted to reformat, so I said yes, then it asked if I wanted to keep or delete the partions, I could then delete them.

Be sure to know, I found out backup disks will not have all your drivers on them, which ultimately covered up some of my original modems, such as communications, sound nd more.

This guy told me, by reformatting, I'd removed those modems. Not so. After reformatting my hard disks, I re-installed the new XP HE full version, and everything worked, except it didn't have the AC'97 sound drivers which I downloaded online later.

Can you get to the first page of "Bootup" which shows your prompt for BIOS enter? If can, go in and check that to see if your CD, Floopy and HDD drives are in order for bootup and enabled.

Wen mine was messed up, I had to purchase a seperate tiny "boot up device that plugs into the USB port and use that to get to a page for commd prompt in order to re-set my directory and into my BIOS to enable my devices then set up "boot-up sequence.

I can appreciate the difficulties; perhaps it is time to try a Mac!!
The simplicity is quite staggering, no lie.