i tried using a formatted ide harddrive from another puter, but then the pc just freeze on the boot image, even if i put it as primary master with no other drives in.
boot to the xp cd and see if there is unallocated space for you to partition. i would first suggest preforming a low level format on the drive to prepair it for the OS if you are able to see it using the xp cd that is. are you able to see it in the BIOS?