Hard Drive unrecognizable

My friend asked me to install Windows XP in her machine. She ran DELPART and now cannot install Win XP. We tried running SMARTDRV but the file is nowhere to be found. We tried installing WINNT from the CD but it gave us a message that there's enough space. We do know that there's plenty of diskspace. Any command typed from the C: drive gives some message "Unrecognizable/Invalid media type…Abort, retry, fail… Please advise.

That message is usually caused by a disk drive that is not formatted properly. Are you installing XP as the only operating system on the disk? Are there files on the disk you want to save? If you want to use the entire disk for the XP install and there are no files on the disk that you want to save then do the following. These steps will REMOVE ALL DATA stored on the disc on ALL PARTITIONS. The entire hard drive will be completely wiped of all data. 1. Boot from the XP install CD. 3. If you get a screen offering to repair an existing windows install press escape to bypass it. From the disc setup screen: 4. If partitions are listed predd 'D' to delete them until the only thing listed is 'unpartitioned space'. 3. Press 'C" and accept the default to use the entire disc. 4. Choose the complete format, not quick format (this will take awhile to complete) 5. Proceed with the installation.