Problems installing Ubuntu

I have an Hp Pavillion 533w(its a 9 or 10-year old computer) I currently have 512 mb RAM 160 GB and 80 GB 7200 rpm seagate hdds. TriGem 2002052 (Glendale) motherboard Celeron 2.0 GHz-400 MHz Front side-Socket mPGA478 processor I had a dual boot of Windows XP pro and CENT OS 5 using GRUB boot Loader(which I had formatted my hard drives and deleted).I have tried instaling Windows XP Pro, Crystal XP, and Ubuntu 7.04 and9.04. Everytime I got the same problem. It runs the install.It goes through copying files and all that.It asks me to restart the computer and I do(I remove the disc like it asked), The computer reboots and all I get is Operating System not found.I rebooted the computer from the ubuntu live cds and all the files are on the hard drive I specified(the 160 GB).I believe it could possibly be the motherboard or the bios because when I reboot the computer and run BIOS setup neither of the HDDs show up.But, my CD-RW and DVD-RW drives do. I'm stumped and have been working on this about a month now. Any help would be amazing.

If the install CDs see your drives your BIOS must as well. Also note after the first reboot Setup asks you to remove floppy drives. Setup still needs that CD although do not choose to boot it. As to Ubuntu can you run the Live CD without installing?

yea.thats what im doing now.

If you mean you are now running off the Live CD I'd suggest trying to boot the XP again and do a Clean Install. As noted do not remove the CD after the first reboot just ignore the option to boot it the second time.

ill try in a bit and repost after.

I tried XP and Ubuntu that way….it just repeated the install.

I am assuming by the age of your computer that these are IDE hard drives and not SATA. Please correct me if I am wrong here as SATA drives would require separate drivers.

If they are IDE drives the next thing I would try is to totally wipe them first. You can use Active@ KillDisk to do this.

they are IDE.

I would try KillDisk to remove the old GRUB completely.

Another thought is to clear the motherboard CMOS:

http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/documen…&rule=34604

Scroll down to Clearing the CMOS settings

i already did CMOS.I'm gonna try the killdisk thing ina bit… is there gonna be any problem since im using an umubtu live CD?

KillDisk is a boot disk. Either floppy or CD. You will boot it into DOS. What it will do that formatting will not do is remove all boot sectors.

is there anything free I can put on a usb flash drive>(I don't have access to and blank cds or dvds at the moment nor do i have any floppy disks)

Same link:

http://www.killdisk.com/downloadfree.htm

Download Bootable Disk Creator for DOS version of KillDisk (Free) (USB Flash & Floppy)

I installed it to a floppy using oa different computer and put it in this one…the program ran fine….i tested it on a usb drive first to make sure….but my hard drive didnt show up on the list.

At this point I would physically remove the drives and try one at a time. Try different cables. Try different channels. Try different jumper settings. If the BIOS does not detect these drives there must be a hardware fault somewhere in the above list unless both hard drives simultaneously died.