0x0000007B Stop Error upon Reformat attempt

So myself and my roomate have been trying to reformat my Dimension 8400. I have 2 hard drives in what I believe is a master slave configuration. Both are seagates, the master (containing all my programs) is 160gbs and the slave (containing all my files I need/media and such) is 300gbs. I've removed everything I need from the 160gb drive and I want to reformat it. I attempted to do so with the Windows installation disk that came with the computer. On first attempt I was told by the windows installation program that to do a new install I would need to boot from the cd because the version of windows I was running was newer than the one on the disk. I tried this and it told me that it could not find any hard drive. Despite this, I was able to boot back up to my 160gb hard drive after this (I unplugged the 300gb drive). I then decided to uninstal service pack 2 so I could try to run the windows installation from within windows. I did this, and it gave me the same 'no hard drive found' message. I tried it a few times and now the blue installation screen for windows turns into a blue stop error screen with this error:

STOP: 0x0000007B (0xF898663C, 0xC0000034, 0x00000000, 0x00000000)

Basically, I'm wondering why I can't reformat here, and also if theres some way to fix this problem. Do I need to update my bios or something? If so, how can I do that? The reason I want to reformat is because I've already gotten several stop errors in the past few weeks, usually when running larger programs or multiple programs at once (adobe premiere etc). I also went into my bios and turned off the 300gb drive.

So, if anyone can help me with this, that would be fantastic, and I would be very greatful.

Thanks

Steve