I have a laptop with sata hard disk of around 250 gb. I want to be as clear as possible. Please concentrate on my main problem and answer for the good.

Thanks.

I was using linux mint 6 (felicia). I then removed it completely by formatting entire hard disk. I formatted the hard disk to ntfs file system using "partition editor" which comes with linus mint live cd.

I formatted it to ntfs file system because i want to install windows xp.

now every time i reboot using windows xp cd, the cd does boot and then loads all necessary files. now there comes the turn to press "enter" to continue xp installation. i do that and i it returns the message telling that windows does not detect any hard disk partition and to properly turn on if there exists one.

What is the real problem?
I know that windows can be installed on ntfs file system.
Has it anything to do with grub boot loader? OR
Has it anything to do with master boot record?

Please clarify...............

I have always found that when creating partitions, it's always best to use the partition software of the system that is going to live there.

In other words, format Linux partitons with a Linux partition manager and Windows partitions with a Windows package.

In the situation you are currently in, I would suggest that you use the Linux partition editor to remove the NTFS partition you created i.e leaving it simply as free space and then try the XP install again.

It does not matter what OS or installer is used to create the partitions....

The issue here is probably that the Windows installer sees non-Windows stuff in the MBR and/or adjacent sectors. Just wiping the first 63 sectors should do it. (This includes the MBR)

From any Linux Live CD--or from many utility disks--you can run a "wipe" or "secure erase" utility. Or simply open a terminal and run this:

Assumes that your hard drive is seen as sda---

dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sda bs=512 count=63

I had the same problem. The problem was that in Windows XP installation disk did not have the driver for SATA -hard disk.

I downloaded the SATA driver from manufacturers site and created a new windows installation disk with nLite.