Computer wont load XP

Stevedye56

Hey I recently took my desktop pc and put it into a tower case. It hasent worked since even though it did work before. It keeps telling me that there is no OS installed. The computer is an IBM so i dont have the XP disc from it because i got it used, although i have a dell XP disc which i successfully installed on my old laptop to make sure it works. Ive checked the cables but with no luck.

Anyone know whats going on?

z-component

Are you using the same hard drive as you were before? Is there only one hard drive?

Stevedye56

Yes same hard drives, theres one hdd with the os on it and the other i bought to slave but i cant untill i get it working obviously

Brother Jerry

No OS indicates that the drive that is designated as primary drive to load from has no operating system on it.

What can cause this.
1) more than one hard drive in the system and the slave drive is designated as master while the OS drive is set to slave.
2) more than one hard drive in the system and both are set to slave, or both master.
3) Cables reversed to HDD
4) Floppy in the floppy drive
5) Non bootable CD in the CDROM Drive and HDD not selected in BIOS as another option to boot from
6) HDD crashed
7) HDD Controller crashed.

All of these as well as a few others could be the culprit.

Double check your hardware config and make certain everything is setup correctly.
Take it down to just the HDD and no other drives at all.

Hope that helps
Sincerely
Brother Jerry

Stevedye56

I tried this but its an older version of setup so i cant set the boot order...

Stevedye56

Iff the Hdd crashed how would i go about partitioning it and installing xp since i only have the dell disc? should i borrow a friends universal xp install disc? I cant change bios either becasue of how old the menu is.

NoTime

Even older versions of BIOS will normally show and identify the hard drives with their assignments (ie:channel 1 pri model# /sec model#; channel 2 ...)

So is the BIOS showing your drives?

Stevedye56

Yes the installed drive is called "hard drive 0" but i cant see any settings.

P.S. i dont see any channel 1 pri model# etc...

NoTime

Sounds like a "very" old computer.

The only other suggestion is to download a floppy bootable disk diagnostic utility and see what it has to say.

Stevedye56

Its socket 1, so yes it is very very old.

Stevedye56

Where should i download afloppy bootable disk diagnostic?

Stevedye56

Should i just setup a new hdd?

NoTime

Look on the drive manufactures web site.

NoTime

You said you just changed to a tower case.
If you hooked everything up the same it should work like it did before the change.

Since it doesn't then either something got broken or you pluged stuff together differently.

It might be worthwhile to check if the drive is actually operating.
OTOH If you do have an OS loader boot disk, then it will tell you what it finds for a drive to load to, before it actually changes things.

manbush

Did you make sure
A) The IDE/SATA cable is connected to the HD
B) The power connector is connected to the HD

Also, make sure you set your BIOS to boot from your HD. Also, make sure that there is no floppy disk in the floppy drive.

Stevedye56

Ive tried this, i cant change the settings in the Setup. Nowhere does it show a picture of the boot order... this is insane.

Should i just set up a bran new hdd?

sstone

Well usualy it it in Advanced BIOS features. Are you sure that the jumpers are in the right place(when the pc starts it should show the ide devices connected(after the ram testing),like this, if there are both of the discs, than they are connected ok and are recognized by the pc.