Hi,
Recently I purchased a barebones systems that I had upgraded where I purchased it. I however didn't like the prices they had on hard drives, and already had 2 dvd drives that I was going to install on the system. The system came all set up, except for of course hooking up the new drives I had to install myself. I did this with no problem and they all power fine. The problem I seem to be having is when I go to load it up I can try 2-3 different ways. The first way would be to load it with no disks in (CD's because no 3.5in drive), this way it shows the video card info., then the ram and system info., then goes to a black screen with the underscore (_) cursor blinking and does nothing. The next way would be with the disk that came with the motherboard, this way it loads the disk but has some kind of problem with the fdata.exe command it tries to load, i can then go and find the fdata.exe file in the command prompt and manually load it, but I'm not sure that is the right way to go either. The final thing I can do is to try putting the Windows XP Pro Full version in it, it comes up with an error on a blue screen and stop loading the disk though. What I'm trying to do is load Windows on my hard drive, and need to know why I'm having problems. I've been told I should just be able to use the Windows XP disk and it should work like that, but I want to make sure this is the way to go. Also I wanted to know if there was a way to access the BIOS screen (Read delete or f2 in another thread?) in order to make sure the read process of the drives is set up right. If I were to get into the BIOS screen would the process be cd/dvd1, cd/dvd2, harddrive, because like I said there is no 3.5in floppy but there is 2 cd/dvd drives and the hard drive. Thanks for the help! Please let me know any information that might pertain, and let me know if you need more info, system specs, or info on error messages (not there to load them at the moment or i would have told them)

The proper way is to boot your XP CD and install XP.

Pressing Delete should get you into the BIOS Setup. Actually you should see on the first screen "Press Delete to enter Setup" or another key might be specified although rarely.

You should just make sure that the CD drive you use to boot the XP CD is set to boot prior to the Hard drive.

You load the motherboard drivers after XP.

I am a bit confused by when you say: "i can then go and find the fdata.exe file in the command prompt and manually load it" ... where are you finding this "command prompt"?

Anyway a blinking _ cursor indicates no boot device being detected.

Also in the BIOS Setup verify that the hard drive is detected. Is it a SATA drive?

Ok, so I went into BIOS and set it up so that the CD/DVD rom drive was before the HD, I saved the settings and put the CD in and let it reload, now it's doing the same thing as before with the _ blinking with no text on screen. The point where i got into the command prompt was when i tried to load the Mobo drivers first, I'm out of that now...and following further instruction....

You said: "I however didn't like the prices they had on hard drives"

1) So you got your own hard drive? Is it a SATA drive? or IDE?

2) Is it detected in the BIOS?

3) Do you ever see a prompt that says: "Press any key to boot from CD"?

4) What type of XP CD are you using? Microsoft? OEM? a Recovery disk?

Ok, finally got it to work, looks like the HD was DOA, after trying to partition a space for the setup it failed, then rebooted and came up with a Primary Master Hard Disk Error. Sound like a DOA hard drive?

sry for the lack of info, its a microsoft full version disk, the drive is a Western Digital Caviar SE WD1600JB 160GB 7200 RPM IDE Ultra ATA100 Hard Drive - OEM, like found http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...B%2b7200%2bRPM

anything else i forgot to mention?

So you got the XP CD to boot?

Are you sure that the drive is set as the Primary Master?

You can run the Western Digital diagnostic:

http://support.wdc.com/download/inde...pid=999&swid=2

You should be able to get it replaced.

so as to answer all of your questions, IDE, YES its detected, no prompt doesn't say that (it just does it now that i set it first), and it is Microsoft Version 2002 XP Pro

hrm....now i juss need a blank CD =), ill try lol is it just the one for DOS?, or which choice would i select under the caviar section?

No floppy drive?

Your WD1600JB is listed under WD Caviar SE - 7200 RPM on the left menu.