cant install any OS

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I have finaly pulled together all the parts i needed to build my rig, however, i went to install windows and after formating completed i recieved a message saying my harddrive was swtiched or unplugged or damaged. I have two hard drives, i tried installing both windows XP and 2k on both of them, and i dabbled in linux but i didnt understand it and i prefer windows. My one hardrive is brand new and im positive it isnt damaged, so i dont think thats a problem. I've looked in a few places and tried various settings and checked my jumpers and no luck. Any suggestions?
 
it looks like you don't have a partitions set up on the hdd.
try this.
1 - get a win 98 boot disk from www.bootdisk.com
2 - in your bios set it to start from floppy first
3 - start your machine with 98 boot disk
4 - after start, choose "start windows with cd-rom support.
5 - at the command prompt, enter you cd-rom drive letter followed by colon:
c: is your hard drive, d: is ram deive and e: is your cd drive for now.
6 - navigate to I386 folder on the cdrom
7 - enter winnt.exe
this will start windows xp install process.
 
Well, your hard drive could indeed be bad! Your "positive" is not enough really. Run the manufacturer diagnostics utility on it.

Also, test your RAM with memtest86(+).
 
Nodsu, just wondering this, Tijwuc might, but how would he go about doing the manufacturer diagnosis on it> And could he run memtest from a floppy or a disk?
 
Windows version is XP,right ?

Tijwuc said:
I have finaly pulled together all the parts i needed to build my rig, however, i went to install windows and after formating completed i recieved a message saying my harddrive was swtiched or unplugged or damaged. I have two hard drives, i tried installing both windows XP and 2k on both of them, and i dabbled in linux but i didnt understand it and i prefer windows. My one hardrive is brand new and im positive it isnt damaged, so i dont think thats a problem. I've looked in a few places and tried various settings and checked my jumpers and no luck. Any suggestions?

Do you have your bios sequence set properly ?
W98 and XP are way different.No boot disk for XP.
Just a full version cd in the start drive set in the bios as first.
 
all good ideas guys, thanks, but im in a weird in between stage where i cant boot windows because ill get a blue screen of death most likely because i changed motheroboards, so running any diagnostics is probabley not possible...i also concluded i cant install XP after all because its a dell OS disc with drivers ect. so im going to use windows 2k. I have had this motherboard running before but switched back to my dell...but after buying a case i could use this motherboard. So, seeing as how it did work once upon a time, i see no reason as to why it wont now and im getting pretty frustrated and am most likely going to scrap it and just settle for dell's garbage.:(
 
All the diagnostics utilities are bootable from a floppy or a CD (which you would easily see if you bothered to look up the things). It would be rather silly to require a working hard drive to do hard drive diagnostics, wouldn't it? :p

A nice all-in-one package here: http://www.ultimatebootcd.com
 
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