"boot disk failure, insert system disc..."

[holtzman]

My brother is working on his first machine. I have helped him a lot, but this stumps me. Upon power on, everything works alright until it starts to boot, where it displays "disk boot failure, insert system disk and press enter." I thought that this meant a dead hard drive, the thing is he doesn't have an OS on the drive, he is trying to install xp. I have also gone through the bios at least a dozen times to make sure it is set ONLY to boot from the cd. Does the system disc mean the OS or the motherboard utilities disk? (I don't have the utilities disk, i could find one online) he is also using an asus 18n sli mobo, a board that i have heard is very prone to this problem. Any ideas on solutions? thanks a lot!
-Holtzman

 

[Tedster]

go into BIOS and ensure it looks for the CD rom first. Then put your windows installation disc in the cd drive when booting. It is looking for the OS installation disc, not a utilities disc.You will also need all your drivers readily available. If you have SATA you will have to install SATA drivers when windows asks to.