Hard Drive Won't Boot

[jwheel83]

Ok I have a WD SATA hard drive that I was running as a primary boot hard drive. I also have two IDE hard drives I run as back up. I only had one installed since I got the SATA drive and I decided to try to install the second one. It turned out to have some pins loose and is destroyed as a result. When I attempted to install without knowing this it wouldn't boot. Next thing I know my primary SATA drive won't boot either hooked up on its own. I deleted all partitions on the drive and tried reinstalling windows several times to fix the problem with no luck. It seems that the only way windows will boot after I install it is if I have the windows CD in the drive. If I don't have the CD in the drive I get SYSTEM BOOT DISK ERROR or something like that. I don't know why having the CD in the drive would help any considering I don't choose to boot from it. If anyone has any ideas as to what is wrong with my drive I would appreciaite the help. Thank you.

Jeff

 

[PC eye]

Time to say Welcome to the Computer Forum! anyways! with the usual reminder to all new members to review the http://www.computerforum.com/52038-forum-rules.html

The first thing you did wrong there was take a running drive and wipe the working installation off of it. To repair this you will have to make sure that the hard drive is set first in the boot order found in the bios. But the master boot record is what needs to repaired there. With XP you boot up to the recovery console and type in "Fixboot" and "Fixmbr" there to see the installer write a new mbr and boot sector information. Then go into the bios to assign hard drive as the first in the order and press enter when that is highlighted to see if you have a menu of hard drives listed. You want the sata at the top.