Windows 7 BSODs at DISK.SYS, installation can't find any hard drives

[Kabscure]

[b]Solved:[/b] For anyone else with the same problem, I just had a corrupt partition. Here's how I fixed it:
1. Get into the CMD prompt from the repair your computer screen
2. Enter "diskpart", then "list disk"
3. Find what disk is your borked HDD and take note of the number
4. "select drive (number of borked drive)"
5. "clean all" (just so you know - this takes forever, be patient)
6. "create partition primary", "select partition 1" then "active"
7. "format fs=ntfs" (this also takes quite some time)
8. "assign"
9. Reboot into installation again, and your HDD should be there!

The other day I dug up an unused Dell Inspiron 1525 and noticed it was in horrible shape. It took at least 5 minutes for everything to boot up and all the useless software in it to start, and it took another good 20 seconds or so to even recognize that I had plugged in a mouse. So I decided to just format it and start fresh. I made a backup of everything in it and put it in a flash drive and then create a bootable Windows 7 USB stick with that app on Microsoft's site. I plugged it in and booted to it, formated the main partition and left the system/OEM partition alone and started the installation then just left it there for a couple minutes.

I came back to check a few times and it was extracting the files and everything just fine, so I left it for some more time. Coming back again, I find that it's finally booting up. So I sit down to get all the drivers and get all my stuff in there and.... it flashes a BSOD for a split second and restarts. I let it boot up again just to see what that was all about and it does the same thing. So I go ahead and try booting into Safe Mode, Safe mode with Networking, you know the drill. Well, it loads up to DISK.SYS, freezes up for a bit and BSODs. I boot into the W7 CD and try the Repair your Computer thing but it doesn't help because it's trying to repair "Unknown Drive in Unknown Location".

So I decided to just reinstall Windows and just sit there to see what the hell happened. Well, after selecting my lanaguage and agreeing to the terms of whatever, I find that it doesn't see any drives. Just, where you select where to install Windows or format a partition or whatever, it's empty. It advises me to install the drivers for the hard drive, so I go looking for that. After a while I find the drivers and install them successfully. Well, it's still empty. Hit refresh... nothing. So after another couple hours of trying random drivers named for the laptop, I gave up and went looking for the factory Windows DVD 'cause maybe I just fucked up the bootable USB stick thing. Same problem, can't install because it doesn't show any drives. Tried using the drivers from the "Drivers and Utilities" DVD, nothing shows up after installing them.

Really don't know what to do anymore - I just about ran out of options here. Any help?

[djjkxbox360]

Try a linux live cd and see if the drive is detected

[Kabscure]

[QUOTE=djjkxbox360;38778248]Try a linux live cd and see if the drive is detected[/QUOTE]
I tried a Linux-based recovery CD and it told me there was a single drive with 0B left that was corrupt. How the hell it's both full and corrupted I don't know, but after some searching I'm currently wiping it clean and recreating a single partition using DISKPART.

[b]Edit:[/b] Solved it! This is how I did it just for anyone else with the same problem:
1. Get into the CMD prompt from the repair your computer screen
2. Enter "diskpart", then "list disk"
3. Find what disk is your borked HDD and take note of the number
4. "select drive (number of borked drive)"
5. "clean all" (just so you know - this takes forever, be patient)
6. "create partition primary", "select partition 1" then "active"
7. "format fs=ntfs" (this also takes quite some time)
8. "assign"
9. Reboot into installation again, and your HDD should be there!