Computer will do nothing but install OS. Over and over and over.

[cactuar tamer]

Even After installing the OS, my newly built computer will do nothing but boot from the CD, trapped in an endless spiral of Installing XP onto the Harddrive. Slooooooooooooooowly. It will not boot from the Hard drive, though It seems to know the HD exists. I don't know what to do. The computer center people on campus seemed to think it was a problem with the way it was clocking, but couldn't satisfactoriliy alter the settings. And as stated before, startup is slow as molasasse. Any help is greatly appreciated.

[Conquest10]

Check to make sure the jumpers are set correctly for the drives. Something similar happened to me and that was the problem.

[zoobie]

Double-check your BIOS. If that's not it, try getting help at http://www.pcadvisor.co.uk/index.cfm?go=discuss.allthreads&forumid=1

[lordsmurf]

PIO mode?

[SLK001]

Uhhhh, take the CD out of the drive? Change your BIOS so that the HD is the first boot device?

[cactuar tamer]

Thanks for the suggestions, I'll try to see what works and post back. ^_^

[cactuar tamer]

I switched the jumper setting from master to slave and it worked fine. Thanks for the help!

[redwudz]

I'd suspect a problem with your boot drive. After you install the OS, did you go into BIOS and change the primary boot to the hard drive? And also remove your OS disc before doing this.

It may be best to unplug all other hard drives and optical drives before installing the OS. Just have your boot drive and your optical drive with the OS hooked up. It sounds like the boot setup can't can't find your OS. This can sometimes happen if you have more than one HD installed. If you still get no success, boot with a Win98 boot disk in DOS and fdisk the hard drive. Delete all partitions, then repartition, but don't format. Then try the OS install again. This starts you with a clean slate. It sometimes works better than the OS disc to clean things up.

And as mentioned above, make sure you have your drive jumpers set correctly.

EDIT: I see you fixed the problem. Good deal.

[Doramius]

I've fixed many of these the same way. THos jumper settings are nasty and sometimes they have to changed from what the manufacturer says, depending on the MoBo you connect it to. But that's been extremely rare, and most often when mixing 2 different brands of HDDs. Don't know why that is.

[InXess]

Dip switches were invented seems like in 19th century but they still push this primitive jumpers...

[smearbrick1]

Uhhhh, take the CD out of the drive? Change your BIOS so that the HD is the first boot device?

I think this is probably what really fixed his issue.

[SingSing]

They need better staff at this campus. They most likely can't solve "Floppy still in A drive" boot problem.

[Doramius]

They're still checking that the power cord is pluged in the computer.