New motherboard in but in a BIOS loop

[Joe T.]

I put in my new board from an earlier post. I have the BIOS set to boot order
as noted by http://www.michaelstevenstech.com/XPrepairinstall.htm#RI.
CD, HD, floppy.
I have the HD as master and CD as slave on my IDE cable. My HD is jumped as
master and CD as slave. It boots like this:
1. BIOS Screen. Master and scondary identified.
2. Next screen says "Sorry for the inconvience...etc with 3 options- Safe
mode, command prompt, network or normal.
3. Safe and normal choice just reboots and the cycle starts allover again
with same results.
The only way I can get to the blue XP setup screen is to unplug my HD.
Only then will it read the CD. It will get to the repair option screen but
what good will that do if my HD is unplugged? I exited, F3, because I didn't
think it would do anything with the HD unplgged. Logic dictates if HD is
unplugged, no data will be sent to HD. Right?
I even tried to put my board disk thinking it would load drivers then be
able to do XP but no.
Suggestions please.

 

[Joe T.]

Correction - The "Sorry for the inconvience...etcs" screen shows these options:
Safe mode
safe mode with networking
safe mode with command prompt
last known good connection
start windows normally.
Selecting 1, 3, 4 & 5 just puts it into reboot and back again.

 

[Joe T.]

Bios says boot order is CD, HD, Floppy. The only way it sees the CD is if I
unplug the HD. I get a endless bios reboot loop when I have the HD plugged in.

 

[Joe T.]

Well, it won't boot from CD to HD so I pulled the HD and put it in a external
USB holder and now it's repairing. Still may have a problem though. I'll see
when it gets one. Pray.

 

[Joe T.]

Now the XP Pro SP2 retail version repair (NOT OEM) stalls at 32%. Ideas. See
earlier posts below for background info.

 

[smlunatick]

Now the XP Pro SP2 retail version repair (NOT OEM) stalls at 32%. Ideas. See
earlier posts below for background info.

Windows XP will not set up onto most external hard drives. You can
not use USB to repair the boot of XP.


To correctly repair your existing XP is to separate the hard drive /
CD and set both to master drive on two different IDE channels.
However, new motherboards only have one IDE channel, which is usually
reserved for the CD / DVD drives.