Hello

I recently built a computer from scratch and I am having some problems getting it working properly. After I put the thing together, I turned it on for the first time to install the os but it would not boot from floppy or cd. It kept going to the hard drive looking for an os to load.

So I thought the BIOS settings were probably incorrect. I made sure it was set to load from the floppy and CD before the hard drive, yet it kept attempting to boot from the hard drive. So I disabled the hard drive in the BIOS altogether, so the boot order was floppy then cd. I put a bootable floppy in the drive and let 'er rip. But I did not get far. The system DID attempt to load from floppy, but I got an error :

Verifying DMI Pool Data .....
Boot from ATAPI CD-ROM
DISK BOOT FAILURE, INSERT SYSTEM DISK AND PRESS ENTER

Inserting a bootable floppy or cd and hitting enter got me back to the same spot.

I reset the BIOS by repositioning a jumper for a few seconds and tried it again. This time I was able to boot from the floppy and I installed Red Hat 7.2 with the GRUB bootloader.

Now I want to make this new pc my Windows computer and take my old one and use it for Linux. However, I am back to the same spot I was in at the beginning of the process and resetting the BIOS does not seem to do it anymore. Even if it did, I'd like the option to boot from a floppy in any case.

Any help would be greatly appreciated!

-Dave

i take it that it is a bootable floppy and Cd rom ?????

Make sure all your settings in the bios for hard drives are set to auto. Make sure you have 3.5 drive "A" enabled and drive "B" disabled. Make sure it says 3.5 floppy there are other selections. Make sure you hard drive and floppy cables are not plugged in backwards. make sure there plugged in all the way. Check for a bent pin in plug socket. Always have the master hard drive plugged into the end conector, not the center one. This will screw up how the pc reconizes the drives. Also seperate the cd rom from the hard drive, do not put them on same cable. This can miss up the way the pc reconizes the the drives. If your using old hardware such as an old cdrom or an old hard drive this can mess it up also. Some of the old stuff just won't work with the new board and bios. hope this helps. issac