Help! Ok heres what happened. I had a 120 gig hard drive that I wanted to format and put Xp home on it and I did that and the XP worked on it and thats all i wanted and I took it out of my computer because I didn't want it in this computer. Now im trying to put my default 80 gig hard drive with xp home that came with my computer inside and I get the error "no operating system found". This hard drive was not plugged in while the format and install took place, I plugged it in after. And now also when I try to use the 120gb i get "no operating system found" i got this same error when i put these hard drives in two different computers. What happened? Help please

you may have inadvertently zapped the drives some way. But unlikely for two drives. Are these drives IEDE or Sata? If so are the proper settings within the mobo set properly as to boot sata or IEDE Do they show up in BIOS? Did you check the cable connections and jumper settings? Is the boot sequence set properly? Did you forget to plug in the power cord? Do you have them set up on the right cable as in IEDE 0 or IEDE 1 You are just going to have to check everything twice if not 3 times. In The Matters Of Style, swim with the current; in matters of principle, Stand Like A Rock

Well when i was formatting the power cable to my 80GB was plugged in. It does show up on the bios

One other thing. You cannot install Windows XP on one hard drive, remove it and expect it to work in another computer. There will be hardware conflicts. Not unless both computers are identical in every way. Stuart

Are you sure you connected the cables correctly? Life is more painless for those who are brainless.