Hi,

basically, I have a new machine
2.8 GHz intel Due Quad
4 GIG DDR3 RAM
geforce 9600GT Graphics Card with 1 GIG Ram

i have a SATA 750GB HDD.
I have a samsung IDE DVD Drive.
And i Have a WIN XP Home AND Pro CDs.

all i want is to install a fresh copy of XP PRO or HOME onto the HDD.

i have changed the boot order in BIOS to allow DVD Drive to be first.

but i never get the "Press any key to boot from CD" message
All i get instead is a blinking Underscore at the top left corner of the screen.

i have tried every possible method to fix this.

firstly, i know the DVD drive works, cos i tried it on a different machine and it works.

i also tried both the XP CDs on another machine and they both work.
in fact, i tried them with the same DVD drive.

i have configured the bios boot order to almost every single combination there is.

____
DVD
HDD
Floppy

____
Floppy
DVD
HDD

____
DVD by itself

____
DVD
Floppy


etc......

and every time i get to the window where the message "press any key..." is supposed to show, all i get is a blinking underscore.


ohh and i also tried a different HDD. i tried a 40GIG PATA using IDE rather than SATA.

again, i get stuck at the same place.


PS: i have managed to boot from the same CD on the same machine in the past. but now, i want to install a fresh copy of XP and i need to boot from cd.


Any help would be greatly appreciated.

thanks for the speedy reply Brian

Yes it is the same machine that was stuck in Ghost Virtual Partition.
No i dont have a floppy, but i can probably get one if needs be.
as far as bootable CDs are concerned, i have XP Home, and XP Pro, as well as Vista. i cant start any of them as i never get the "press any key..."message.

regarding ghost, i ended up playing around with it and messed it up i think.
before reading the replies, i messed it up by trying to delete the files one by one using command, in the hope that when the PC starts, it wont find those files.
this led to not being able to start windows either.
i get the message about "not finding a proper boot record" or somthing like that.
i tried using bootcfg, fixmbr and fixboot. none worked
and that was when i was able to boot from the XP CD.
now i cant even do that, as i mentioned above.

i tried googling the problem, but no one gave a clear cut answer.

hopefully someone here will pin point it.

there is a short peep when the system starts, but as far as i know that's normal. and the mobo manual doesn't say anything about a single short beep.

i have tried removing one of the RAM stick and leave only one.
I have also tried other slots.
i also removed all of them and got the beeps, just as it is mentioned in the manual.

i still wasn't able to boot from CD.
Could it be that the mobo is faulty?
or could it be that the mobo is only compatible with SATA Drives, even though it has one IDE port?

thanks for your help in any case.

i have already tried disconnecting all hard drives and boot only from CD, i still couldn't do it.

in any case, i tried a different CD drive and it worked, or at least it has worked until now. no guarantee if it will continue working.

the old cd drive works fine on another machine, just not this one. if i had known it is the CD Drive, i would hav changed it a long time a go.


thanks for all your help guys. really appreciate it.
i have however got a new problem, please have a look if you can.
hammer