Machine posts, but won't boot off HDD?

[Washu1000]

I have an odd problem. I recently dug some old hardware out of my closet and managed to throw together a PC out of spare parts. I wasn't 100% sure it worked, but was happy when the thing booted just fine to my XP install CD. I ran through the initial setup, partitioning, formatting, copying, etc, until the first reboot where it boots and finishes the setup on the hard drive. However, it never boots. It posts just fine and gets the screen where it lists devices and *should* begin to boot. However, it just sticks there and flashes the cursor, no errors or anything. I have no idea where to go from here. I know the hard drive is perfectly good and booting off a CD works just fine. What could the problem be?

 

[GalvanizedYankee]

If it's an old WD HDD...Remove the jumper. Don't use master or slave.

This is a system with one one HDD, is it not?


...Galvanized

 

[Washu1000]

Originally posted by: GalvanizedYankee
If it's an old WD HDD...Remove the jumper. Don't use master or slave.

This is a system with one one HDD, is it not?

...Galvanized

Yes, a single HDD and a DVD-ROM drive. Have tried swapping between all the IDE channels and boot sequency and had the same result. The drive is a pretty new 300GB Seagate I just pulled from my current machine that works fine. I can even boot off the CD, go into the recovery console, and navigate around the drive. All the windows set up files are in place and the drive is reporting all proper information.

To make the matter even more wierd, the system doesn't even freeze. It just sits there like it is waiting to boot, but give no error messages and I can still ctrl-alt-del to reboot.

 

[jagilbertvt]

Hey Washu, can you give us some more info on the machine you're installing this onto? (processor type, mobo chipset, amount/speed of RAM)?