[johnwill]

Normally, those messages are due to a disk driver of some kind making the drive appear to be a network drive.

I'd suggest that you remove all the partitions from the drive and start from scratch when you boot the XP CD.

 

[johnwill]

Hard to say what's going on, but it would help a great deal to know details of the hardware you're using. MB make/model, any disk controller, type of disk, etc.

 

[johnwill]

I think it may be time to clear the CMOS to factory defaults. If you're starting from scratch on that system, you sure shouldn't be seeing anything that looks like a network drive! I'm assuming you're not using an add-on IDE controller, but plugging directly into the MB, correct?

 

[johnwill]

Look inside, see if the ribbon cable from the HD goes directly to the MB.

 

[johnwill]

My solution to this issue would be to put the disk in one of my drive drawers and format it on another system. I'm not sure what's going on, it's certainly not normal.