I am trying to setup a used pc and when I try to boot up, it stops at the "post" and say "network selected as first boot device for current boot". I have cd, hd and floppy in my boot config. I have never seen this message before, so looking for help.

It sounds like you have the first boot device in the BIOS set to network.

No, I have cd-rom, floppy and hd in that order. Nothing to do with network. That's the crazy part of this. I am trying to load Win XP on to this machine. It presently has no os installed. I only have a display card installed. The machine has a built in nic (Gateway 700X, Pent 4, 2GHz, 256MB ram). I have never ran into this in all my pc days!

Jack,try these steps to see if it helps. Step -1 enter bios and set everything back to default.Did it help?no,ok! Step-2 Try formatting the Masterboot record by FDISK/mbr.Did it help?no, ok! Step-3 try booting your system with only the minimal hardware.remove the floppy drive,Cdrom, ect,and only connect the video card. Example:So you should just have the video card,harddrive.Did that help?if it did?then add the hardware one by one to determine were the conflict is.

Usually this means that none of your media is bootable, so it defaults to the network boot. Does the CD boot in another machine?

It sounds as if the pc has previously been used on a network, and this could be part of the networks security. It may be that you have to wipe the hdd, with a low level format and completely install your own o/s and software form the beginning. Also you have to get in the bios, and check the boot order. Keep it simple, get it to boot from a dos floppy first. Good luck - Keep us posted.

Well, I want to thank everyone who responded to this problem! Nice to know there are people out there willing to help! I had not set the time and date in the CMOS and while scratching my head and trying everything else, I decided to set those settings and guess what? I had a pc that booted right up without any further problems! Thanks guys!! Jack