this started when i connected a laptop drive to my pc with an adaptor to run win xp... it eorked fine and suddenly when i tried to boot i got a black screen with a white flashing line in the top left corner, i went back to the old HD.

The other day i damaged another pin on my HD when i stripped my PC to tidy up the cables (2 were already broken) my computer would then not boot (Primary drive 0 not found)

anyway, i did a clean install on the laptop drive and ran xp off that one, it worked fine for a few days and then i got the black screen again.

I tried installing xp to my mp3 (20GB), it found it in the setup but when i tried to install xp onto it it said something about it cant boot to this device and special software is required.

I have xp again on the laptop drive temporarily whilst i'm trying to get it on my mp3

Could you please tell me how i would do this? is it something to do with "USB device (not installed) option? (not needed anymore... see update)

also, with the laptop drive, i tried in the recoveryconsole typing fixboot and fixmbr, neither worked.

Thanks
Mike

UPDATE: i baught a cheap 10GB HD from ebay to keep me going and then i was looking at the physicaly damaged HD and had a brainwave.... i decided to snap off the pin from next to the jumper pins and insert it partly into the IDE cable and HEY it worked

i'm having problems installing the graphics though which is strange because this HD was running xp and all applications (the laptop drive was not in the system) and all i have done is swapped the drives and then swapped them back!!

UPDATE #2: downloaded drivers from dell website and it worked... doesnt work from my disk though

okk, gone again.... getting UNMOUNTABLE BOOT VOLUME bsod

tried a clean install which took forever, same problem... this was with the xpsp2 slipdisk, i'll try with the origonal xpsp1 disk soon

but it detects the drive.... why wont it boot????

Unmountable Boot Volume

As to the USB device: unless your motherboard specifically supports booting from USB then it cannot.

thanks, got that sorted this morning, got a 2nd hand HD, installed windows and it worked for a bit.... then it got to the xp screen and i got the error again

so i thaught its not the CPU or RAM because it's starting, its not the HDD because i tried 3 different ones, so its either something to do with the bios, the ribbon cable or the HD connector/controler on the mobo

so i thaught i would start with the simplest..... replaced the cable and hey!!! it worked!!!

Thanks anyway
Mike