I have just installed a new 120 western digital hard drive on my Pentium 4 PC. Western Digital provides a data life guard tools utility that allows me to format this hard drive very quickly. This tools package worked well this time. Once the formatting was finished I installed Windows Xp immediately. There were no problems doing this either. After all was said and done I tried to boot up the PC. Insted of going directly into windows I received this error message. "Reboot and select proper boot device or insert boot media in selected boot device and press a key". Not the most helpful message. If I reboot the PC I go directly into into Windows XP like nothing is wrong. If I shut down the PC and restart I get this annoying error message again. What could possibly be wrong. I have tried exchanging the IDE cable with no results. PLEASE ASSIST.

Thanks

I have removed your email address. You should never as in never ever post your email address in a public forum. Badguys and spammers, and even so called legitimate direct-marketers troll public sites for email addresses to add to their lists. And besides, the purpose of forums is so everyone has an opportunity to participate or view and learn.
***

This boot problem usually occurs when you have an external drive/usb attached while booting and/or your boot order in the BIOS Setup Menu does not have the boot disk listed first. I would boot into the BIOS Setup Menu first and make sure the boot order (and date and time since you are in there) is correct, then make sure you Save and Exit and see if it boots normally.

If you have an XP Install CD:

Boot the machine with your XP CD.

Click to select any options that are required to start the computer from the CD-ROM drive if you are prompted.

When the "Welcome to Setup" screen appears, press R to start the Recovery Console.

If you have a dual-boot or multiple-boot computer, select the installation that you must access from the Recovery Console.

When you are prompted, type the Administrator password. If the administrator password is blank, just press ENTER.

When the machine is done loading, type in;

Chkdsk /f

When it's finished, try booting normally.

If it still won't boot, repeat the above, this time type in;

Fixmbr



* More information on MBR
FIXMBR: fixmbr device name
Use this command to repair the MBR of the boot partition. In the command syntax, device name is an optional device name that specifies the device that requires a new MBR. Use this command if a virus has damaged the MBR and Windows cannot start.

Warning This command can damage your partition tables if a virus is present or if a hardware problem exists. If you use this command, you may create inaccessible partitions. We recommend that you run antivirus software before you use this command.

You can obtain the device name from the output of the map command. If you do not specify a device name, the MBR of the boot device is repaired, for example:
fixmbr \device\harddisk2
If the fixmbr command detects an invalid or non-standard partition table signature, fixmbr command prompts you for permission before rewriting the MBR. The fixmbr command is supported only on x86-based computers.

Thanks,Dan Penny. It is useful for me.Thanks a lot.This is a good forum, I learned a lot.

Thanks for your quick reply. I have tried all that you have suggested so far. The only item I have had attached when I formatted this HD was my scanner. I have since unplugged it. Should I format again? I don't know. I am thinking that just becasue the scanner was plugged in [USB port] that this may have caused my problem even though there was no software installed for the scanner. Stranger things have happened. The BIOS set up is fine. I have my Hard drive first, CD second, and my floppy last. Its an old PC. I do not have any external drives. One odd thing has happened. I decided to reboot at the point where I received the original reboot message. When I rebooted the second time Windows XP loaded up just fine. I then shut the PC down completely thinking that the removal of the scanner might actually have caused my problem. UNfortunately it booted to the same message again. Still open to additional ideas.

Dan Penny...Thanks for your advice. I ran the recovery command and it came back saying " checkdisk found some errors on the volume". It didn't specify anyting further. I then ren the FIXMBR comand and it said, " This computer appears to have a non standard or invalid master boot record". I am not sure what my next step might be. Unfortunately I purchased this hard drive off of Ebay. Any suggestions. Please respond. Thanks in advance.

Perform a Repair Install.

How to Perform a Windows XP Repair Install (Just below the first bold red bar on the page. Please read the entire page first though.) BEFORE running this, go to C:\WINDOWS\system32 and copy the; wpa.bak wpa.dbl files to a safe location. After the repair install, if asked to VALIDATE WINDOWS, try copying these two files BACK INTO the C:\WINDOWS\system32 folder and do a restart. (You may not have to revalidate Windows.)