NO zoom zoom without CD

[notsoannoying]

so i just bought a bunch of new hardware. MB, CPU, memory, video card and wireless card, oh and power supply, who would have thought 350w wouldnt be enough anymore lol... anyway to the point.

i put all this stuff together. im not a noob when it comes to computers on the basic and slightly advanced side of things but i ran into a problem with an easy but annoying fix. after doing a quick partition format on old HD and installing windows XP home i restarted the computer after installing video drivers. after the bios screen it says "no valid boot disk present. replace disk and press enter" but if i put the xp cd and boot it says "press any key to boot frome cd" if i dont do that it will boots just fine. how do i fix it so i dont have to have the cd in to make it boot?

[Cyclonite]

What's your boot order in the BIOS?

[notsoannoying]

ive done it both, hdd > cdrom and cdrom > hdd

[Thrax]

So let me get this straight:

The PC boots normally if the XP CD is in the drive? If it is not, the PC reports that there's no boot disk?

[notsoannoying]

correct

[kryyst]

Boot up with the cd in the drive then go into recovery console and do

fixmbr

the follow it up with

chkdsk /r

just to make sure.

[notsoannoying]

ill give it a shot :) anything but what was suggested in the MB manual.... they say format the drive and start again. but ive already DL'd and installed Warhammer and installed WOW :( i dont wanna do all that again lol that stuff is time consuming

[notsoannoying]

are you saying to boot from CD when it asks? im kinda dumb about this stuff i usually just put the CD in and do what it tells me to.

[mas0n]

Yes, boot from the CD when it asks and press "R" the first time you are prompted to enter recovery console. Then select your windows installation and follow Kryyst's instructions.

[notsoannoying]

ive tried that in the past and i get prompted for a password. but ive never set a password. is there a default one?

[mas0n]

If there is no password just press enter.

[notsoannoying]

ok so fixmbr did nothing.. is there any thing else i can try before formatting hdd?

[scott]

Here is another thing to check. Drive letter assignment.
I had a similar problem once after a cloning and it would not boot without the old drive present.
Check in disk management to see what is showing up as "C" If the hard drive with windows is not "C" that is the problem. If your CD drive is "C" shut down , unplug the CD Drive and reboot. that should reassign the hard disk to "C".
If in disk managment you see that your hard disk is "C" then make sure the partition with the OS is the system disk. Does the hard disk have other partitions on it ? If so what are they labeled in disk management ? And what is the CD drive labeled ?


Scott

[notsoannoying]

Here is another thing to check. Drive letter assignment.
I had a similar problem once after a cloning and it would not boot without the old drive present.
Check in disk management to see what is showing up as "C" If the hard drive with windows is not "C" that is the problem. If your CD drive is "C" shut down , unplug the CD Drive and reboot. that should reassign the hard disk to "C".
If in disk managment you see that your hard disk is "C" then make sure the partition with the OS is the system disk. Does the hard disk have other partitions on it ? If so what are they labeled in disk management ? And what is the CD drive labeled ?


Scott

ok ill be a noob again how do i get into disk managment?

[scott]

NP

Right click "My Computer'
Left click "Manage"
Left click "Disk Management"


Scott

[notsoannoying]

NP

Right click "My Computer'
Left click "Manage"
Left click "Disk Management"


Scott

did that HDD is C: and CDROM is D: :(
it sucks its like the computer dont even look for the HDD when booting up even with that set as the first boot device. looking like im going to need to get a new HDD probably just get a SATA drive and call it good.

[scott]

But does it show "C" as the system disk ?

Is there more than one partition on that hard drive ?

Scott

[notsoannoying]

in the status column it says healty(system) for the C drive and health for the cdrom drive

[scott]

Thats good !
That means it really is a boot record problem. ( I think )
I would try the recovery console again and this time try

fixboot
and
fixmbr

If that dosen't do it I'm outta suggestions.

Good luck

Scott