hi guys, i hope u can help, let me start at the beginning, i run this system at the moment:
pentium 4 2.8ghz, 1.5 gb ddr ram , 160 gb PATA hard drive , 250 gb PATA hard drive for video/audio. ati x8oo pro graphics, audigy 2 sound, 2 x dvd burners liteon.

now this was ok but im in to heavy video usage, so i bought a intel pentium d 945 chip
(2 x 3.4 ghz 800 fsb) an MSI 945pl geo motherboard, 1 gb ddr2 ram (for now) pci-express graphics, 2 x ide to sata converters for the hard drives as the m/board has 4 sata connectors and 1 ide ( blue connector)socket and 1 fdd socket. So i built the system and windows does not load (using my existing hard drives plugged into sata 1 and sata2 connectors of m/board), so i disconnected all except 1 dvd burner and 1(old 80 gb ) hard drive on to a normal 80 pin cable to the ide connector with dvd as slave, formatted the old 80 gb hard drive, put windows 98 se on it so i could then put xp on it, 98 se ok but i cannot load xp cos the dvd burner is not on the system so when i load the xp disc it does not see it but it was ok for loading 98se, im scratching my head big time,

any suggestions guys, ta very much jonbee

Is this the board:

http://www.msi.com.tw/program/produc...il.php?UID=705

First off it is best to simplify the system as much as possible when installing XP.

Especially with SATA drives. Multiple drives are often problematic and the converters you are using might be so as well.

The SATA should be in the first SATA port usually SATA0. The CD/DVD should be the IDE Primary Master.

If the above doesn't work then what you tried on the IDE should have.

So my questions here are: why the loading of '98? This is not a pre-requisite for XP.

If your '98 CD was detected so should your XP. These different disks should not affect the detection of the DVD/CD drive in the BIOS or it's ability to function.

So are you saying your DVD does not boot your XP CD but will boot a '98 CD?

Also back to SATA there are many settings in the BIOS Setup to adjust how the motherboard handles the SATA ports. A basic setting is that it should be on SATA and not RAID.


Hope this qualifies as any suggestions and let us know what you think.