Disk Boot Failure - I need help please!

Simply put, I did a clean wipe/reinstall of Windows XP Professional. Everything was routine, and instillation went along just fine. Windows booted up and I installed my motherboard and video drivers that I downloaded prior to reformatting off of a CD-R. When I restarted the computer after installing the drivers, windows will not boot and I get this message: "DISK BOOT FAILURE, INSERT SYSTEM DISK AND PRESS ENTER"

I have tried messing the boot order, and have reinstalled windows twice with two different legit CDs and keys, but still have the same problem.

The drive was working perfectly before the install and I didn't see any errors or hear anything out of the ordinary that would be cause for alarm. The weird thing however is that I can boot windows if I have the windows instillation CD in the drive. If I have anything else, or nothing, I get the above message.

My system specs:
AMD64 3700+
nforce 4 motherboard
2gb pc3200 memory
Western Digital WD2500KS 250GB SATA HD
nvidia 7900GT

Any help would be greatly appreciated! Thanks in advance!

 

I should also mention that I ran a Diagnostic test with Western Digital's Data LifeGuard program. The drive passed with flying colors!

 

IM taking a stab at this, im thinking the bios is set to boot from floppy and you may not have one installed, your bios might be tricky, so set first device to be harddrive and disable all others till you see if this is the problem. ed

 

My bios are set to boot the CD-ROM first then the hard drive. I do not have a floppy like you said and I've tried different configurations including booting the hard drive only and disabling everything else. No luck.

Thanks for the help though.

 

I think you have to be missing something in the bios, be absolute that your first device is the hard drive, and no cd's in any drives. Also reseat the ide cable running from the motherboard to the hard drive. ed

 

I went through the bios again and its set to boot the hard drive and hard drive only. Everything else is disabled and all cables are secure. I just reinstalled windows for the third time and still the same problem. Thanks though.

 

Yes, the drive is recognized in the Bios correctly. It's a SATA drive so its the only drive on that cable.

 

There was no need to. I'm not running a RAID setup so I didn't need to install any drivers during the windows instillation. Also there are not any drivers that need to be installed after instillation, it uses standard windows drivers.

I reinstalled Windows for the forth time and I think it is working. I'm not sure what I did differently, but so far I'm able to boot into windows with no problems. If I continue to have problems, I'll be sure to come back! Thanks for the help.

Peace