Ola, Please read (all of) this! (Sorry...) About six months ago my laptop (dual booting Win2000 and RedHat 8.0 from MBR) began to have problems. Sometimes the BIOS would not realize that hda existed and would leave me with the great "Operating System not found." message. Note that sometimes it would boot, sometimes it would not boot. Now it NEVER boots. Needless to say there is something wrong with my hard drive. BUT, I could still boot Linux from a floppy and it worked perfectly well after the kernel was loaded (you know, cause kernels scan the bus for themselves and don't believe the BIOS which really is a liar in my case...) Anyway, the setup disks for Windows XP and 2000 both did the same. They found hda and installed things onto it. Yet, once the installation is finished, I have to reboot and ... bingo (Houston we have a problem...). I transferred my Linux boot disk onto a CD so that it would boot quickly (slow, slow floppies.) However, I have not been able to find ANY information on how to build a Windows XP boot CD or even boot floppies. (Every site talks about setup disks, or MS-DOS disks, or XP P.E. disks, XP w/SP1 setup CDs, but not one on a real, full, Windows XP boot CD.) Since all of the OS kernels find the hard drive, I just need to get it loaded from a CD and let it go from there. Boot loaders rely on the BIOS to scan the ide bus and load a kernel from one of the detected devices. However, my BIOS does not detect the hard drive so C:\ does not exist to the boot loader. Hence, ALL boot loaders freeze when trying to find the kernel. (I've tried LILO, Grub, and NTLDR and all fail.) However, a true bootable XP CD should run the NTLDR to load the XP kernel FROM THE CD which will scan the ide bus on its own, ignoring the BIOS (and finding my hard drive like the kernel from the installation CD does) then the rest of system startup would be passed to the hard drive. XP is very big, but even the entire XP Prof. OS is installed from a single CD (I think there is a second disk, but I've never used it.) Plus, the kernel has to fit in memory, it surely can fit on a CD. (Although, I do agree that it's an extremely bloated OS.) Finally though, if there is a boot loader out there that DOES scan the ide bus on its own, like an OS kernel, then I will give it a shot, but I have never heard of any that do so. I hope this is not the case because this might be my only ray of hope left. :) Maybe this is misunderstood: I can boot the setup CD and install the OS, but then the hard drive won't boot. I can boot into linux (from a CD) and mount the partition fine (given that I install it as FAT.) I don't need SETUP boot disks, just boot disks. (You can find sites all over the web about the setup disks, so that's not the issue.) This is a confusing issue, but I am hoping that someone else really needs the same thing I do: a boot CD. What if the kernel on the hard drive gets corrupted, but you want to still boot fully into XP before fixing it (you might need to get on the internet, make setup disks, etc.) You can't do this without a full complete kernel boot. Sorry for the novel, but everyone always misses the point of what I am asking for. Please, if you know how to do what I am asking help me, I beg you!! If you think you have another way, there is little hope that it will be right as the trouble is VERY specific with only two possible options for solving it: 1. A full, authentic, (NON-SETUP!) XP boot CD (or) 2. A boot loader that scans the IDE bus like an OS kernel Again sorry to push the point so hard, you are "most ecellent" if you can help. Thanks, igloo

well has far as your bios going hey wire i would see if there is an update for your mobo, u can flash it and update the bios and then that might fix this entire problem, other than that i have never heard of any disk or cd that will boot windows xp for you, however i do know that u can use a 98 floppy to get your comp up, so if u can boot with a 98 disc and find the comand for win xp to load (i think in 98 it was just c:\win or something) then that might be a solution, i would try to update the bios first thing, sorry if this doesn't help

Excellent observation Tony, but I forgot to mention that I have already tried that. I had the latest BIOS installed before all the troubles started (I had to get it for Win2K.) I reinstalled it again to see if it would help, but no luck. Thanks, igloo

so if u go into your bios it is set on autodetect and it detects no hard drive, right? so maybe try to set it up manually, or if it is not auto detect then turn that on, u might just need to tweak some settings with the cmos, i know u prolly already tried this too but...give it a shot and i will see if i can find anything else, sorry if this doesn't help, keep me posted

i dunno if this will work with the whole thing about scanning the bus for the drives or not, seeing as how u said something about it earlier, but here is how to make an xp boot (not setup disk) http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;Q305595&sd=tech hope this helps

It used to work fine under autodetect. But,even a manual configuration leads to no results now which is most confusing concerning the BIOS. Even though I give it the hard drive parameters manually, it STILL says that it can't boot. (It overrides my manual configuration! and says [NONE]!) It still remembers the values I entered, but calls me a liar and ignores my requests. What a card! Anyways, that particular website shows how to build a boot disk with just the NTLDR (Windows boot loader.) As I explained earlier, that boot loader relies on the BIOS to find the hard drive and just hangs when it can't find it. If the OS kernel is not loaded before trying to access the hard drive in any way, all efforts will fail. I would just buy a new hard drive, but I really think that a boot CD feature like the one I need should be available. (It makes sense that there should be a way to do it, I just don't know how. I might have to take the time to research how to do it and make my own URL for the other sufferers/angry people wanting to get their computers back when MSoft doesn't like to help us.) I am too cheap to give in! It's not a horse, so broken leg - is not equal to ( != )- shooting. Though I do think PentiumI's and below need to be euthanized, but that's not the issue here. Thanks again for your help and putting up with all of my rambling, igloo

no prob, but i don't know if getting a new hard drive is going to work, have u tryed to use it in another machine and then see if it would boot? i don't think we have any proof that is the that hd and not your mobo or something, i would exhaust all possibilities before makind ANY purchases, first would be to use another hd in that machine and seeing if it finds it, then using your hd in another machine to see if it finds it, then you could narrow it down to see if any ide cables are bad (i know this is prolly not the case since u can boot to linux but just in case), just MAKE SURE it is the hd before you buy something you don't need, hope you have luck finding out what it is, also i have found sites that talk about this problem and it seems noone knows what is going on, so don't just jump to the conclusion that it is your hd, one solution i heard of that works sometimes is removing your mobo battery for a few mins so that the cmos has to restart everything, give that a try, hope this helps