system disc?????

[realtor388]

I hope I am putting this in the right place. I just finished building my first computer. The problem is I am supposed to boot off a system disc the first time I turn it on. so how do I make a system disc when the new puter is going to have windows xp and the one I am on mow has windows ME. pLEASE HELP.

[Statica]

Your windows XP CD is a bootable system disk. Simply go to tyour BIOS and set the boot order to CDROM as the first device. Simply boot with the XP Disk in your CDROM drive.

[realtor388]

Thank you. Do not want to seem stupid, but do I use the xp disc, to boot up the first time or do I use the motherboard disc and load the bios first. I did see that there are two updated bios files on the asus site and I put them on two seperate floppies. It does say to load one of them first them the other update. So do I even both loading the bios on the motherboard disc??
You guys are always great, thanks again.

[Force Flow]

You use the XP disk.

The BIOS upgrages envolve "flashing" the BIOS. A procedure that is not recommended unless one of these upgrades addresses a problem you've been having.

[Statica]

Your ASUS CD is not bootable, and as such cannot be booted with. You could follow one of these 3 routes, depending on what you are comfortable with. I just arranged it in order of what I would do in a similar situation:

<u>Method 1:</u>
1) During the POST sequence (during detection of IDE devices etc etc), there should be a shortcut for ASUS' built in BIOS flash (I believe its Alt+F2; but check it for yourself to be sure); now when prompted point the flash program to your BIOS file in your floppy drive to flash your system
2) After you repeat for both the BIOS files, and you have set your system boot order to read from CD ROM first, then boot with the XP CD in your CD drive to set up your system.

<u>Method 2:</u>
1) Set up your system by booting with your XP CD, once you are done setting up windows-
2) load up the utilities in your ASUS CD; one of the utilities should be a Windows XP BIOS flash utility - not only will it flash your sytem to the latest bios, it will also do so in a user friendly manner, from the latest BIOS file it will download from the internet.

<u>Method 3</u>
1) Download a DOS or a Windows 98/95 bootdisk from www.bootdisk.com and create a floppy bootdisk
2) Start your sytem with the floppy being the first boot device, and your aforementioned bootdisk is in the floppy drive.
3) Once at the DOS prompt, flash your system with the BIOS file
4) After getting the BIOS updated; you should move on to the setting up of your computer with the XP CD.

<hr>
Even though, its rather self-explanatory, I will type it out anyways; that a BIOS update is a serious change of your system, and if something goes wrong - it may pretty much render your system unusabe. So be sure you read the instructions thoroughly before proceeding with a flash, and be sure that the update corrects something that is needed for your system to perform well.

HTH

[realtor388]

thanks guys, tried it but the system still tells me it does not see the hard drive. I have it jumpered as master and in bios set as p-ata.

[ktkendall]

You gotta go the the page where U set the order of devices U want the PC to llok for to boot from, and CDROM needs to be in there as one of the devices. Some boards are a bit finicky though and U may have to have it be the first device..

[Cricket]

Also, set the hard drive to CS (cable select) and put it on the black connector of the IDE cable. Blue connector goes to the motherboard and grey goes to a slave device.

:) Cricket

[realtor388]

I did have it on cs but still had the same problem

[realtor388]

I also do have it set for cd rom and that does work, it the drive that is giving me a headache.

[realtor388]

well I wrote wd and did all they said, there diagnostic tool will not even work on the drive. it is toast. this is great dor a first build... guess who's hard drive I will never buy again.