Dear All I have finally put the bits for my new system together, and in so doing have exhausted my knowledge - and need any help from anyone at all who knows anything!! I think the problem I have is arising because the default settings in the BIOS are not good for my system, but I have not got a clue where to start changing things. This is what happens when you give an idiot a screwdriver. Here's the story so far: I turned the thing on, and it gave me the splash-screen for the mobo (MSI K8N Neo Platinum). This stayed up for a good 5 minutes. It then ran a few tests and all seemed OK. So I went into the BIOS, set the clock, turned off the splash screen and restarted. Without the splash, you actually get to see what its doing - and it said "Detecting IDE Drives" for about 5 minutes before continuing much as before. So, I enabled the setting for RAID hard drives and rebooted. This cut the 5 minutes right down, but only to 1 or 2 minutes. At this point, I realised I hadn't once inserted the boot disk. (Frightening, isn't it?) So I did that - and after thinking about it, it said "Please remove the disk and restart". The net effect was that nothing changed. So, I thought I'd try something radical, and shoved in my Windows XP Home disk. This went straight through to the normal OS installation screens and I happily partitioned & formatted the drive and told it to install away. It did its first run through until it reached the "I need to restart in 15 seconds..." and then it successfully rebooted. Straight back to the original XP setup screen. So, in my expert wisdom, I decided to let it have another go. It then did exactly the same thing, but first warned me "Hey - it looks like there are some Windows files already here. I'm gonna have to delete those" which I thought was probably a sensible move. It then got to the first reboot, and rebooted straight back to the initial XP setup screen. I declined a third invite. It was at this point that I discovered a CD Rom in the mobo box. So, thinking I had solved the problem, I shoved it into the tray and restarted. It chugged away for a few minutes and eventually said: NVIDIA Boot Agent 201.0440 copyright NVIDIA blah blah copyright Intel blah blah PXE-E61: Media test failure, check cable PXE-M0F: Eiting NVIDIA Boot Agent DISK BOOT FAILURE, INSERT SYSTEM DISK AND PRESS ENTER And it did this every time I tried to boot to the CD Rom. And thats it. Anyone have any ideas of what I should do next? I scoured the web and couldn't find anything directly applicable to my setup. All responses appreciatively received! Cheers Tom

Let me get this right... Did or didn't you finish the last installation of XP? Or did it just go in circles during your install? If you have finished the installtion completely, set BIOS to boot from your HD. btw, you shouldn't try to boot from your cd-rom with the cd which came with your mobo since it only contains drivers. If above doesn't work I suggest you boot from a ME bootdisk (bootdisk.com) and delete all your partitions and format your drive. Restart PC w/ bootdisk and go to your cd-rom. Type: cd i386 [enter] then type: winnt [enter] setup should start now. If you're still having problems, let me know and I'll try to help you out here. ~Liz Intel P4 3.2E Ghz@ 3.8Ghz Asus P4P800-E Deluxe Kingston 2x512MB PC3200 D-Channel Asus AX800 Pro WD Caviar 160 GB WD Raptor 37 GB Zalman Reserator 1

first i would check for any bent pins then try new cables

'Raid'? Do you have sata drives?or a raid card with ide drives? Can you give you system specs to help us. Are the jumpers in the right positions? Tt Lanfire nf7-s v2.0 XP-m 2500@209x11 SP 97 512mb pc3200 Jou Jye 550w psu FX5600 WDCaviar 160gb sata WDCaviar 160gb sata ;~}

I assume as you managed to get it to boot initially without RAID drivers that you have just IDE RAID. So your only fault was to (1) not load the RAID drivers as prompted at the start of installing XP & (2) not letting it boot to the hard drive after the restart (booting to the CD option just starts the whole process again, as you found out). Do it again, but follow the screen prompts. "I know that I'm mad - I've always been mad..."

Wow - thanks for this. I need to absorb it properly. I did keep saying I'm an idiot, so it may take me some time. Glad to hear no-one saying "its blown up - buy a new one". Just to take a few points quickly (will post full specs a bit later): "Are the jumpers in the right positions?" - as far as I know. My knowledge is limited though. Am I getting the kind of error that suggests that they might not be? "Did or didn't you finish the last installation of XP? Or did it just go in circles during your install?" - Didn't finish. Just went in circles. "If you have finished the installation completely, set BIOS to boot from your HD" - Hmm. I already made that setting. Was that wrong? Should I have waited until install was complete? (I'm making myself cringe with embarrassment at my idiocy here) Re: cables/pins: I'll try some other cables later. The MSI ones come in very restrictive binding, so its a possibility something isn't connected right. "'Raid'? Do you have sata drives?or a raid card with ide drives?" - I really hate this. I haven't got a clue. Definitely not SATA, though. Bit too old for that. Will post up details later. So - I'll try johnr's suggestions. If that fails, I'll try Liz's (why the ME boot?). If that fails, I'll post back. Meantime - post anything up here you can think of as I'll be checking with laptop. Thanks again so much Tom

If your hard drive is not new out of box, With a win 98 startup disk in floppy drive and with bios set to boot from floppy, restart pc and at the "A" prompt, type fdisk. When it has got to the point where it asks large drive support say yes. then you will get to the fdisk partition section . Press option 4 and if a primary partition is shown delete it, also if any other delete that. Then restart computer with the xp disk in the rom and the bios set to first boot cd rom and xp will start to install and it will format drive and carry on install. If you have sat hard drive then in the first stages of installation you will be asked to press f4 and will need promise drivers on a floppy and it will install raid.Good luck and win xp will request the win 98 disk to confirm your right to the upgrade to xp home