BIOS won't accept HDD sequence, still looks for CD

[JoeyGen]

I hope I'm posting in the correct forum!

Ok so I recently reinstalled XP on my Dell 4600. Did all the usual steps; went into the BIOS and changed the Boot Sequence to CD-Rom and eventually it loaded XP. I say eventually because even though I selected to boot from the CD-Rom drive, the BIOS still looked for the DVD drive that is mounted (but not working, and not hooked up). After a few reboots I hit F1 to continue past the DVD drive and it booted and reinstalled XP.

I did all the XP updates online and once the OS loads it works perfectly. The problem I am having now however is that XP will only load if the CD is loaded in the CD-Rom. I changed the Boot Sequence back to HDD but the same error message pops up stating that the DVD drive that is not hooked up cannot be found. Once I press F1 to bypass, it gives me the option to strike any key to Boot from CD (I don't press anything so it will boot from HDD) and it loads fine from there.

Can anyone suggest a way to resolve my problem? Thanks in advance!

 

[BadBigBen]

have you tried to clear the CMOS? (see the manual on how to do that for your system)...

you could also attempt to LOAD DEFAULT VALUES in the BIOS setup and do not forget to exit and save, rebooting, then again check your BOOT sequence and adjust it to your needs...

though this is the first time I hear about a problem like yours, XP does promote the ODD (optical disk drive) as first boot device after the first reboot during install, this is to ensure that the install CD is present when the GUI part of the setup continues, and I guess it can become stuck...

Ben
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