I have just bought a new mortherboard, i took my HDD (20gb western digital) out of my old system which had XP pro on it and hoped against hope XP wouldn't freak out too much about the hardware change. On boot up the BIOS detected my drive and proceeded to boot it just said Disk Boot failure, please insert bootable disk. I then stuck my XP CD in my machine to get to the recovery console to check all my files where intact, but it wouldn't allow me to access my drive.. said no media loaded. I also couldn't browse the XP CD! Tried to repair my windows installation, said there was no disk installed. I took the HDD and stuck it in another machine and formatted it (NTFS) as thats what I wanted it to be in the end. Tried to reinstall windows and it now gets as far as letting me choose where i want to install it to, but it just lists 4 UNKNOWN DISKS (no medai loaded) I have then tried witht the drive as FAT32 and no formatting at all, I get ot the same point. Trying to create a partition at that point results in the blue screen of death, and an error writting to a non paged area. In addition to this my new motherboard a CHAINTECH 7JNS has a front panel for audio etc but also has a fault reporting code, of FF which means motherboard error. Do you think my problem lies with my motherboard rather than my HDD or maybe memeory. I am pretty sure all the jumpers etc are correctly configured. I need to know ASAP as if its faulty i need to get a refund. Any ideas/ suggestion greatfully recieved, if you have an idea no mattr how aft it may sound i would love to hear it becasue I have wracked my brains over this one.

Suggest you go back to the basics! Fdisk the H/D using a Diskette with Fdisk and Format on it. Fdisk and Format the drive, when finished insert your XP Cd and boot to the Cd drive and install. Good luck!

Before I would take something back to the store, I would remove everything that was not needed. Get rid of extra Ram, HDDs, CDRW, DVD, and 2nd monitor, whatever you do not need to boot a computer. Then start all of your efforts again. Check all connection, pin settings, ECT. Use the HDD manufacturers drive tool (available on the website) to check the drive.

I used F disk to format it before i tried to install windows :-( I only have my memory, processor, the hdd, gfx card and CD ROM in my machine. if i take anything out it won't boot. Also tried 3 IDE cables!