An issue with booting up the computer

[Guest]

I just finished building a computer, and I installed Windows XP Home on it
(SP2). Everything runs and works just fine, except I cannot start the
computer without the Windows XP CD in the tray. It says, "Boot from CD:" and
then, "boot disk failure, please insert a system disk and hit enter." This
cannot have anything to do with the mainboard's BIOS, I think, because I
tried disabling everything but booting from the harddrive, yet I still get
that error message. Windows XP is paid for and activated, of course. I can
boot up just fine if I have the XP CD in the tray, but that can be a serious
irritation and I know that it is NOT supposed to work that way. Does anyone
know how to get rid of this problem? I have tried everything I can think
of... I know beyond a doubt that it is no kind of hardware problem, and I am
99% sure that it has nothing to do with the BIOS.. it is a windows-only
problem, of that I am very certain.

 

[Carey Frisch [MVP]]

Open your BIOS and set the hard drive as the first bootable device.

--
Carey Frisch
Microsoft MVP
Windows XP - Shell/User
Microsoft Newsgroups

Get Windows XP Service Pack 2 with Advanced Security Technologies:
http://www.microsoft.com/athome/security/protect/windowsxp/choose.mspx

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:

| I just finished building a computer, and I installed Windows XP Home on it
| (SP2). Everything runs and works just fine, except I cannot start the
| computer without the Windows XP CD in the tray. It says, "Boot from CD:" and
| then, "boot disk failure, please insert a system disk and hit enter." This
| cannot have anything to do with the mainboard's BIOS, I think, because I
| tried disabling everything but booting from the harddrive, yet I still get
| that error message. Windows XP is paid for and activated, of course. I can
| boot up just fine if I have the XP CD in the tray, but that can be a serious
| irritation and I know that it is NOT supposed to work that way. Does anyone
| know how to get rid of this problem? I have tried everything I can think
| of... I know beyond a doubt that it is no kind of hardware problem, and I am
| 99% sure that it has nothing to do with the BIOS.. it is a windows-only
| problem, of that I am very certain.

 

[Guest]

That is the very first thing I tried when I saw this problem. After that, I
removed the CD drive entirely from the boot process. That didn't work
either. I then removed the CD drive entirely from the computer. That also
did not affect the problem. This problem is purely Windows XP related, I am
sure. It has nothing to do with the motherboard BIOS or any of the hardware.

 

[Brian]

If what your saying is true then thats a very strange problem. You might
want to try to reset the configuration data in the BIOS or use the clear
CMOS jumper setting. If you still think its an OS problem then post the
contents of the boot.ini file. Or boot the recovery console and re-write the
MBR with the FIXMBR command. Then fix the boot sector with FIXBOOT. Use the
/? switch with these two commands first to learn the proper syntax first.

Brian Pugh
A+, Network +, MCP

 

[Maurice N ~ MVP]

Jason,

For everyone's benefit, do clarify a few things. You just built this pc. Did Windows ever work without a problem?
Has this 'problem' been there from the beginning?