XP Will Only Boot With The Setup Disc In CD Drive

[davsl]

I have just re-formatted my PC and it will only boot up XP Pro if the setup/installation disc is in the CD rom drive. If the setup disc is not in the drive the PC just stops at the black windows start up screenwith blue bar at the bottom, it just does this forever. I wondered has anybody any thoughts regarding this matter please.

[Panama Red]

Are you using a Western Digital hard drive? If so, this thread from another forum may apply.

http://www.ozzu.com/mswindows-forum/...ve-t68713.html

"Solved! And it was even documented, although it's pretty obscure and doesn't make sense to me!

Western Digital hard drives can't be used alone on the IDE cable and be set to "master" ... they MUST be set to "cable select". Someone pointed out that my rediculously long POST time probably meant my drive wasn't jumpered properly (which I scoffed at, of course, because I thought I knew everything about slave/master stuff! ). Fortunatley some brave soul actually went to the Western Digital knowledge base and found the problem and solution clearly stated. "

[glc]

Removing the jumper is also an option - that sets it for Single operation.