Built a system using an ECS mobo and an Athlon 1.33g. System has 256m stick for memory, 40gb Maxtor IDE and a floppy drive. When I boot the system from the floppy, partition the drive and format it, its fine. When I go to reboot the system, it fails and says press any key to continue, and THEN it will boot from the HDD. It stops each and every time. I've changed mobo's and it still does the same exact thing. The power supply is small 250W, but would that cause it to fail on boot "initially" but not after pressing any key? I havent even gotten to the OS install, since it doesnt cleanly boot into just the command prompt. Does this sound like cpu/mobo incompatibility, small power supply, (HDD is brand new, changed it cause of this problem, still no fix) what? It basically boots fine from floppy, but without the floppy its says that it fails to boot, press any key and then boots to c: prompt. Im lost!

If you are installing the Windows OS, it should be automatically formatting the hard disk for you? You can try this: format c: /s and then sys c: Use boot disk with format.com and sys.com from an already installed Win OS. You may have to do sys a: too when making the boot disk to get sys c: to work on the hard drive.

Oh yeah, when you do fdisk make sure the Active flag for primary partition is on too.

Oops, I didn't read your post fully. Did you confirm the bios settings for start up? I have the same brand mobo (k7s5a) and I never had that happen. Although, I was just able to install the OS and download the much needed bios update before a system crash.

it is most likely your power supply. The ECS k7s5a is the most pickey board when it comes to power supplies and ram