My new system...

[EvilManagedCare]

...that I put together with my very own hands actually posted! I am very pleased.

Of course, this has not gone without some questions. First, here are the specs: AMD 64 3000+, LAN Party UT (based on nForce 3 250 Gb), Geforce 5700 Ultra, using the onboard sound.

Anyway, I haven't installed Windows XP yet, I just configured the BIOS. My drives were detected properly, and I have set the boot order to be 1. CD Rom 2. Removable (which is for the floppy drive) 3. Hard Drive. After doing this I put a floppy in the drive, which sprung into action with the light and had already been turning. I ejected the disc, turned the PC off and looked at the floppy cable. The red stripe is lined up with pin 1 on the motherboard. I flipped the one attached to the drive, and the drive was not spinning when I reinserted the disc, so I assumed this was fine.

I rebooted the PC, the message boot from CD: came first, then nothing happened. I assumed I would get a message about the floppy drive. The latter's light didn't come on or anything. There are no CD's in the CD Drive. I know I don't need a floppy drive since the CD drive is a DVD RW etc, but I still want everything to work right.

I then took the boot disk and tried it at my work computer. Nothing happened. Just got a black screen with a lonely cursor. I am assuming the files were perhaps corrupted when I accidentally stuck the disc in the spinning drive. The files are listed when I explore the disc.

I guess I'm wondering how I can ensure the floppy is set up correctly? Is there anything else that could be wrong?

Thanks for the help.

 

[mechBgon]

What exactly are you referring to when you say "boot disk?"

Look at your floppy drive for an indicator mark or a numeral that shows which pin is Pin 1, and look in your mobo manual for Pin 1 on the mobo's floppy plug, and make sure that the floppy drive and mobo are on opposite sides of the section of floppy cable with the twist in the middle. Done with the guesswork now and you can test your floppy for functionality by downloading the DR-DOS 7.x boot-floppy-making utility from http://www.bootdisk.com That'll create a bootable floppy and your system should boot from it and land at an A:\ prompt.

What should happen is you put your WinXP CD into the optical drive and then you'll see the prompt Press any key to boot from CD... after POST, unless there are no other bootable devices at all, in which case it may dive right into Windows Setup without the prompt.

Hope that helps

 

[EvilManagedCare]

Thanks, Mech. BTW your photo guide is very helpful. I'll first recheck my connections to the motherboard and drive. I had to do this all very quickly this morning. I'm inclined to think the disc may be somehow screwed up since it would boot neither at home nor work. By boot disc I meant a floppy created from bootdisk.com that would give a DOS prompt instead of going into Windows.