In an nutshell: Put an old (working fine) WG 120G IDE HD into a new system, did a clean XP Pro install, booted up fine a few times (when I left the XP Pro CD in the CD Drive), but when I took the XP Pro CD out of the CD Drive, it halted after the BIOS screens with "Error loading OS" (right after the "Verifying DMI Pool Data" message).
If I put the CD in the CD Drive, and let it boot up *from the HD* (touch no keys when it says touch any key to boot from CD), then it apparently boots up from the HD just fine. Comes up all the way to the windows desktop, obviously loading the Windows configuration from the HD.
If I take the XP Pro CD out of the CD drive, it halts with the "Error loading OS" message.
I've used Recovery Console with fixboot and fixmbr, same results. I've tried several IDE cable swapouts, same results. Checked master/slave jumpers, tried cable select and dedicated master/slave configurations, same results.
Background: Just built a new system with a Gigabyte N650SLI-DS4L Mobo, 4G RAM, booting from the IDE 120G WG HD. Also has a SATA Maxtor 500G HD for data, on the SATA IF on the Mobo. The only other anomaly is that it has a Maxtor SATA/150 (w/ IDE) PCI card to drive a second IDE CD-R drive, but when it boots up to load that add-in card into the BIOS, it says "no device found" so it doesn't load the card drivers. However, with that card installed or pulled out, it has the same results (same "Error loading OS" message *only* when Win XP Pro CD is not in the CD drive). So that card is apparently not relevant to this problem.
Questions...
Is it really booting from the CD even though I don't "touch any key"?
Any suggestions on what to do next to troubleshoot this?
Thanks in advance for any suggestions!
-=- Mike
If I put the CD in the CD Drive, and let it boot up *from the HD* (touch no keys when it says touch any key to boot from CD), then it apparently boots up from the HD just fine. Comes up all the way to the windows desktop, obviously loading the Windows configuration from the HD.
If I take the XP Pro CD out of the CD drive, it halts with the "Error loading OS" message.
I've used Recovery Console with fixboot and fixmbr, same results. I've tried several IDE cable swapouts, same results. Checked master/slave jumpers, tried cable select and dedicated master/slave configurations, same results.
Background: Just built a new system with a Gigabyte N650SLI-DS4L Mobo, 4G RAM, booting from the IDE 120G WG HD. Also has a SATA Maxtor 500G HD for data, on the SATA IF on the Mobo. The only other anomaly is that it has a Maxtor SATA/150 (w/ IDE) PCI card to drive a second IDE CD-R drive, but when it boots up to load that add-in card into the BIOS, it says "no device found" so it doesn't load the card drivers. However, with that card installed or pulled out, it has the same results (same "Error loading OS" message *only* when Win XP Pro CD is not in the CD drive). So that card is apparently not relevant to this problem.
Questions...
Is it really booting from the CD even though I don't "touch any key"?
Any suggestions on what to do next to troubleshoot this?
Thanks in advance for any suggestions!
-=- Mike