WD 200GB HDD, WinXp - "No Operating System" 1

[willdavies]

Hallo
After a huge amount of messing around building a new PC for myself, including a brand new motherboard that literally caught fire (now have another new one), I'm now faced with the following message:

"Error, no operating system" (or similar).

My PC won't boot from the CD-ROM, so I had to use the floppy disk set to load WinXp. First of all, after it had got through the six floppies, it then examined my HDD, took about 40 mins to do a 'quick' format! Then it started copying files ("This may take several minutes"). In fact this took over three hours - I let it carry on thinking it would be easier to diagnose HDD problems with Windows installed. Anyhow, it copied all the files and then rebooted, only to get to the above message. The BIOS recognises the 200GB drive, come up with the correct parameters etc. I know about the 137GB problem, but through this was somethign that was addressed AFTER you'd instaleld an OS! Any help really appreciated!!

 

[Freestone]

Resolving your IDE issues should be your first priority as the long "quick" format, and the extreme amount of time to copy files is indicative of a serious basic hardware problem that no amount of XP tweaking will fix.

Some things to check, probably not a complete list:

[ul]
[li]In BIOS, ensure IDE detection is set to AUTO[/li]
[li]In BIOS, if SMART is enabled, try running with it disabled[/li]
[li]If you have another hard drive, try that in place of the 200GB[/li]
[li]Make the hard drive the only device on the primary IDE channel. Confirm its jumpers. If using cable select, make sure the drive is on the master segment of the IDE cable. If not cable select, set the jumpers to master, or in the case of some drives, master with no slave, or single drive[/li]
[li]Try another IDE cable[/li]
[li]Download the hard drive manufacturer's diagnostics and run them[/li][/ul]

I would set the CD-ROM drive as master on the secondary channel, and in BIOS, make it the first boot device. See if you can boot off it it then. I'd try to get this going so you can quickly try a reinstall of XP to see if the long install time is resolved.

Another possiblity is bad RAM.

What components were stressed duing the motherboard fire?