Trouble booting

[DyslexicHobo]

My step-dad just bought some wireless network adapters and a wireless router so we can all be hooked up to the cable internet, but the adapters needed Win2000 or WinXP to work. He only had Win98, he bought WinXP Upgrade, and since his hard drive was so filled with viruses and spyware I figured it'd be best to do a clean install. I re-formatted the hard drive and installed Windows XP Upgrade, everything seemed to go fine. It finished installing/formatting and rebooted. It was going along fine, then it said "Please insert boot disk" or something to that extent.

I went into the BIOS and couldn't find any evidence of the hard drive even being plugged in!! I knew for sure that it was, because the Windows install was detecting it.

I have no clue why this would be happening, I don't know what brand it is, because there's no stickers or anything on the case. Probably HP or something. I know that it's not a problem with the BIOS because it's used this exact same hard drive before. Does anyone have any ideas on what's causing the problem?

 

[wisdomtooth]

Hmm... If you are doing a clean reinstall, perhaps a mere WinXP Upgrade won't work? I was under the impression that only the full version can be used for clean installs.

 

[VigilanteCS]

Yeah you need the full version of windows XP, not the upgrade.

 

[DyslexicHobo]

Even though I had the Windows 98 CD? During the installation it said that an earlier version of Windows could not be found (because I deleted the partition), and asked me to insert a CD with an earlier version of Windows.

If this is the case, is that Windows XP Upgrade CD returnable/sellable? Probably not I guess (I don't have the reciept with me to check).

 

[wisdomtooth]

Hmm... Perhaps the computer is still trying to boot from the CD? Maybe the boot order in BIOS needs to be changed so it won't boot from the CD but from the hard disk..

 

[DyslexicHobo]

I tried to change that, first to boot is IDE-0, no luck. I've changed it to IDE-1 and IDE-2, and both of those just get stuck after the BIOS loads.

There was also another option I found to change the boot order (by pressing F12 at startup) and the only devices that were there were the CD-ROMs and the floppy drive. Anyone know why it's not recognizing my hard drive?

 

[DyslexicHobo]

Help.... please?

 

[DyslexicHobo]

One more bump, I really need help figuring this one out. I don't feel like spending $100 bringing it to a comp repair store when I could do it myself.

EDIT: Sorry, I just noticed this should be in technical support.... I forgot this forum had a tech support board!