Unable to boot without CD present after fresh load of WinXP Pro

[Guest]

I have done a fresh load of XP Pro on a barebones system and I am having
problems with booting off the hard drive. The OS is install on an nForce4
Ultra SATA RAID controller. The drives are stripped. I am able to install
the software to the correct partition and drive without incident. I press F6
correctly and load the necessary drivers for the HD controller. When I
reboot, the system will give the following error: DISK BOOT FAILURE, INSERT
SYSTEM DISK AND PRESS ENTER. I have the system set up to boot CD first, SCSI
(RAID Array) second and USB-Floppy third. Using these settings I can boot,
BUT I have to have the installation disk in the CD drive or else it will not
boot to the hard drive. I am NOT pressing any key to boot from CD when
requested so it just looks at the CD and then proceeds to boot from the RAID
array. If the installation CD is not present, abra cadabra, no boot and the
error message appears. BTW, I have an IDENTICAL setup just like this working
just fine on XP Home, so I don't think it is my config.

 

[Guest]

I have the same problem, no RAID. Just an ATA IDE HDD. I boot it, and get a
cursor flashing when it should be booting XP. I put the CD in the drive and
it boots and runs. How do I get the thing to boot withoput an XP cd present??
TIA, Rich

 

[RWS]

I have the same problem, no RAID. Just an ATA IDE HDD. I boot it, and get
a
cursor flashing when it should be booting XP. I put the CD in the drive
and
it boots and runs. How do I get the thing to boot withoput an XP cd
present??
TIA, Rich

 

[Guest]

RWS, thanks for the response, but I can't seem to find an answer to my
problem in there...I'm running XP home ed. I don't get any error message,
just a blinking cursor. When I put the cd in the drive, the XP loading screen
comes up and everything works from there...is there a setting I'm missing? Do
I need to reinstall? I installed on a used HDD, do I need to reformat it more
than once?
TIA, RichB

 

[RWS]

RWS, thanks for the response, but I can't seem to find an answer to my
problem in there...I'm running XP home ed. I don't get any error message,
just a blinking cursor. When I put the cd in the drive, the XP loading
screen
comes up and everything works from there...is there a setting I'm missing?
Do
I need to reinstall? I installed on a used HDD, do I need to reformat it
more
than once?
TIA, RichB

------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Wait a second...
What is the boot sequence in your BIOS settings again?
You say that you are using an ATA IDE HDD right, not SCSI (RAID Array)
If so, then your boot sequence in the BIOS should probably be something
like:
1.CDROM
2.HDD-0 (or however your actual ATA IDE HDD is listed)
3.USB-Floppy
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

[Guest]

Boot seq is floppy, cd-rom, hdd. I am using an ATA IDE 80GB HDD that was
used for LINUX previously. I reformatted and installed XP Home Ed. Only one
HDD, the others are disconnected until I get this thing working...
Thanks again, Rich

 

[RWS]

Boot seq is floppy, cd-rom, hdd. I am using an ATA IDE 80GB HDD that was
used for LINUX previously. I reformatted and installed XP Home Ed. Only
one
HDD, the others are disconnected until I get this thing working...
Thanks again, Rich

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The fact that you can only boot if the XP CD is in the CDROM drive probably
indicates that these files are either missing or corrupt:
ntdetect.com
ntldr
boot.ini
Since you just tried a clean install, I'm guessing something did not go
quite right -
If possible, you should probably update your BIOS first and then try Repair
Install -
http://www.michaelstevenstech.com/XPrepairinstall.htm
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

[Guest]

Thanks, I finally got a chance to talk to one of the IT gurus here at work,
and he recommended pretty much the same thing. He also suggested I reformat
using fdisk /mbr to make sure the old LINUX boot info is gone...
I'm going to try it all after work and see how it goes.
Thanks for your help, ich