problem setting uo new pc

i got my abit nf72 today from newegg. i havent yet recieved my 3200xp+ and decided to install my new mobo using the cpu i have (xp2100). i put all my hard drives, dvdrom, ram etc back onto the mobo. i did what the manual told me and cleared the cmos etc and triple checked everything was connected prperly. so heres the thing, at the boot screen after mem test etc, i get a message saying 'missing operating system'. this puzzles me as the operating sys is on the primary hd to which it is set. i take it my cpu is supported. what else could be the problem?

 

well the only prob is that i had to un-set the other pc up and set up my old one again so i could post this. the bios definately said that my hd with the os on it was primary master. the other hd, which i just use for music, was prim slave.

 

do you get a error when it boots like ntfs not found or somtthing like that?

 

if you getan error like bootstrap missing youll have to fdisk and reinstall since you have your old working you can back up easily if this is not an option borrow an xp pro 2600 disk and try repair option in it

 

I'll go with Major Attitude on this one -- your system is looking to the wrong drive for the operating system. I'd suggest that you boot into something simple (DOS or Win 9x would be good) and run FDISK to see what drives the BIOS is seeing and which letters they are given. No need to make any changes to any drives at this point.

Once you have that information, go into your BIOS setup and make sure that the right drive is identified as your boot drive.

 

Another problem may arise, taking HDD from one system with windows loaded to another system most likely there will be conflict of chipset drivers etc.
Need to reformat and reinstall the OS.

 

ok well thatnks for the help guys. ill wait til my 3200 gets here. in the meantime i might shift all my important stuff over the D drive then do a fresh install make backups etc.