Having issues reinstalling windows

I can't reinstall from windows so I am trying to reinstall from booting to the cd. Problem is every time I try it gets to the install part then says "Setup could not detect a hard disk installed blah blah" or something like that. Thing is i'm not sure how it can say that since I can access the HDD from windows just fine. When I tried changing the boot order to:

HD01 (Tried 02 and 03 both had same results)
CDROM

It didn't get to the point where I could boot from cd, just went right into windows. When I tried to set the drives manually under primary slave in cmos and did a detect it didnt find anything. I'm not very smart on these things but someone else hooked up my HD and its been working fine till now I cant get it to detect on windows install.

I run a Samsung spinpoint (I think) 120gb

So yeah, i'm confused.

is the drive ide or sata?

It's this: http://www.firingsquad.com/hw/3269/...B_SP1213C_SATA/
I even tried using SCSI setups and that didnt work either

my mobo is abit nf7-s rev 2.0, I have the mobo disk but it wont let me create a driver floppy for the sata drivers, I tried copying the files direct off the disk and it didnt work, tried to do the install from the windows install thing f6 and it gave an error bout some oem.txt causing issues or something odd like that...

do you have raid enabled on the mobo? also, you could try using nlite to make yourself a custom windows xp cd with the sata drivers slipstreamed. also, get the latest drivers from the mobo's website--don't use the ones on the floppy.

do u try change type of SATA from "default(i cannot remember) to compatibility(if i not mistake)" in safe boot.
this maybe works because last time i also having same prob with IBM laptop..after i change, then installation can work properly

You can try to use Legacy/compatibility mode but this will slow your disk to unacceptable level.