Newbie here, first build question...

hey guys, i just finished putting everything together and couldnt be happier. actually that was until i ran the windows boot CD. everything was going fine and it went to the message "starting windows"...then after a few seconds it goes to an error screen that says something about "if you have installed new harddrives remove them and try again"...did i miss a step somewhere that i have to prepare the HD's?

 

Your BIOS should auto detect your hard drive. How many hard drives do you have?

 

i've got two...one 80Gb set as master and a 120Gb set as slave...the BIOS recognizes both but once windows setup tries to start windows it goes to an error screen

 

Remove the one that windows isn't installed on and report to us what happens.

 

this is a new install on the drive...has never been installed on either

 

How can windows start when it isn't installed on either drive?

 

Ummm...

You did partition and format the master drive? And that's the drive you're installing Windows onto?

Fertyop -- it looks to me like oreil42f is booting from the Windows install disk. It'll start Windows just fine. Sure, it's tailored to do just one thing -- install Windows on a hard drive. But it's still Windows.

I don't know if you've ever had to start from a Windows 98 Startup Disk -- but it'll tell you that it's starting Windows, then boot you up in character mode -- i.e., a DOS command prompt. You can't get the Windows graphic interface onto a floppy. But it still tells you it's starting Windows.

 

Yeah, could try taking out the windows CD when starting windows.