machine wont boot unless xp cd in drive

[DarkTXKnight]

hi all,

Ok I have just built a machine for work to burn DVD's :

AMD XP 2500
Epox EP- 8RDA+ board (nforce-2)
120 GB WD HDD
512 MB DDR
Sony DRU-500 AX DVD Writer

All of the assembly went fine, and when I loaded XP everything seems ok, but then after I rebooted later I get and invalid system disk in the bios . Thinking that some windows update toasted the install I go ahead and reload everything. When this later happens again I notice that it seems to happen after removing the windows XP cd. To test this theory, I put it back in the machine and voila! it boots.... this has never happened on any other loads and Im not doing anything different - if anyone knowns how to resolve this Id be grateful!!!!

Thanks in advance!

 

[jackschmittusa]

Is your hd the first boot device in the bios?

 

[stockjock]

You don't by chance have the CD as the first boot device do you....just a thought

 

[DarkTXKnight]

no HDD o is the first device, , no I did have the CD set to be found first in order to load the os, but i do that all the time and it doesnt matter once ive loaded the os

 

[DarkTXKnight]

nope guys I already went through the easy stuff.... DVD is the first to be checked in bios and the HDD-0, the HD is correctly setup as first device on chain etc. I am leaning towards this boot sector issue you speak of, which then makes me wonder if I should return the drive even if I could recreate the sector. This is a brand new 7200 rpm 8mb cache WD 120 GB drive ordered from newegg.

 

[Broadkipa]

Have you got the jumper on the hard drive set correctly, had a prob like this myself once and turned out I set the jumper wrong.

 

[DarkTXKnight]

well something else i have noticed is that when i started installing XP the screen seems to sit at detecting IDE devices for a long time, maybe 45 seconds or more, then finds all drives and continues to boot. I have put in another HDD and it detected thatsecond, older disk much faster and continued to boot odd huh? and yes jumper is set to master

 

[DarkTXKnight]

@##$ !!!!!!! thats it....... I was just now looking at the jumpers and there is a setting for single no master and single with slave and i had it set to single with slave, rebooted mahcine and it boots!!!!!! thanks broadkipa and all who helped.... everything looks normal now

 

[Broadkipa]

That one caught me out as well, spent 2 hours trying to get my sons computer to boot, I was sure I had everything set right. Got so fed up went to Western Digitals site for help as it was a new drive. Went to there FAQs and the first thing they said is that the most common cause of problems is incorrect jumper settings. So I checked again and sure enough I had set it to master instead of single drive. We live and learn.