need more help on 90 % new build

[rojoreds]

OK....need a little more help...I will go ahead and say I might not have enough info for you gearheads to help and if not I can go back to get it. Here is the deal. Bought my daughter a Dell a few years back.....it started having some issues, I discovered it had a case fan failure...ordered a new fan but it also did not work....the darn dell mobo only had a single spot to connect the fan. Also I noticed the video card fan was not working so I ordered a new video card, mobo and ram. Then I learned the mobo would not fit in the current case so I ordered a new case....and a new power supply. I am reusing the cd drive, dvd drive and hard drive from the original PC. I finally got it all together and booted it up pressed del to enter the setup for the bios...set it to boot from the cd drive ( I am going to format the HD and install windows XP). It does not seem to want to boot from the CD drive....it spins etc but never boots. I changed the bios to boot from the original HD and get a message that some file is missing and that I should boot from the orignal cd and select repair. This becomes an endless loop.... can't get it to boot from the CD ... can't boot from the original HD so I am stuck....any ideas here? I guess given the fact that I have already replaced the most expensive components already I could just by another CD drive and HD and just have a complete new system but I am tight and was trying to save a few buck...thanks in advance.

[newbuilder14]

What are your jumpers set to on your drives?

[k9bliss]

The cd that you are using to boot from a xp reinstall from dell or a retail version of XP. Also, since you have change the mobo you need to do a Xp repair. How large is the hd.

There's a thread in Tips and Tricks covering XP repair, including the IDE controller trick to avoid the reinstall.

http://forum.pcmech.com/showthread.php?t=151522

[rojoreds]

I will have to check the jumpers. I did not make any changes to the IDE device jumpers so whatever they were set to when I took them out of the Dell unit that is still the way they are set.

The cd placed in the CD drive is the new one retail version for XP PRO. Since I had the system set to boot from the CD drive I assume it would not matter as I don't really intend to repair but to install XP Pro so I will be formatting the original HD.

Question...it seems to me it might not be truly recognizing the CD drive since I get the error message telling me windows can open because repair is need and I should boot from the original cd and select r. Does that message come it trying to open windows on the Hard Drive....? If so it would appear that it is skipping over the CD drive and trying to boot from the original HD.

I will check the jumpers later today and post a reply to that. Thanks in advance.

[whubbard]

Do you have it set to boot from CD first in your bios?

[rojoreds]

ok....I checked the jumpers and they are set to DS. Now more info...I had the CD drive, DVD drive and Hard Drive installed. I could never get the boot from the CD. I removed the DVD drive and tried again and finally got the message to press a key to boot from CD which I did. I have tried this three times so far with slightly different issues each time here they are:

First time got message setup inspecting hardware then it begins loading files....

1st time got this message - The file cdrom.sys is corrupted press any key to restart system

2nd try got this message - hal accpi.dll in the [sourchdiskfiles] section of the inf is corrupt or missing. Cant continue press any key to exit.

3rd time got this message - file pci.sys could not be found.

After these three attempts I decided to post this here to see what you guys think next steps are. Thanks for the assistance so far.

EDIT: I am editing this to say that it seems to be loading and at the moment I have not gotten any new error messages..now it seems to get to a certain point and it just stops...I let it sit for 10 minutes while it indicates it is loading a file....once it even got to the point where it said it was starting windows but after 15 minutes nothing new happened. So I have shut down and restarted. Really need some feedback on what is happening. Thanks

[rojoreds]

Yes I do have it set to boot from the cd within the bios. Thanks

[rojoreds]

OK....final update I hope. Not sure why this is working but I removed one of the sticks of ram and tried again and voila....it loaded the files, started windows and is not in the process of formatting the hard drive about 70% complete. Looks like this may work ok from here. After I get windows os installed I will reinsert the memory and run mem test to see if I have problems there. Thanks for the help along the way.