Boot Problem and Drive Lettering

[Perrako]

I recently got a brand new rig up and running (first self-built compy!) and I'm having some issues with my Windows install. Currently the specs are:
Intel Core 2 Duo E6400
Western Digital Caviar SATA 3.0 Gb/S 250 GB drive
WD Caviar IDE 250 GB drive filled with stuff from my old comp.
Maxtor 80 GB Diamond Plus drive filled with stuff from my even older comp.
Generic DVD-Rom Drive
Generic CD-RW Drive
XFX GeForce 7950 GT
Audigy 2 ZS Sound Card
Asus P5N-E SLI
Coolmax 650W PSU

I'm running Windows XP Home edition, and about half of the time, I boot into it just fine -- if I have the Windows Install disc in. However, when I do boot fine, it first says "Press any button to boot from CD" and delays the boot process a bit. The other half of the time, it just sits there with an Underscore (like it's waiting at a command prompt, but won't respond to keystrokes) or says something to the effect of "INSERT SYSTEM DISK. PRESS ENTER TO RETRY." I've tried switching the boot order in the BIOS to use my Hard Drive first, but if I do that or have a disc different from my Windows Install disc in the DVD ROM drive I get that "INSERT SYSTEM DISK." error. Even if I have my DVD drive be the second priority boot, it doesn't work.

My other more minor but still obnoxious error is that my new SATA drive is showing up as the I:\ drive even though it is the system and boot drive. This gets pretty annoying, so is there a way to fix it?

Thanks in advance for even reading this!

 

[gavinseabrook]

I recently had troubles with a 250 GB Seagate, where it would take forever to load into windows if i had it plugged into my Raid controller, but I found that teh drive had an exploded capasitor on it. So im going to go shopping. Gota guy that is gonig to sell me a 250 GB for 50 (new). One thing you could try, is disconnect your other "Older" hard drives, and see if it boots fine. Did you remove your old system files from your old hard drive?