Here's the deal.  My nephew asked me to PUT together his new computer. Nothing fancy, 1.6ghz duron, 128mb of memory a 40 gig hd and a 52x cdrom.  I put everything together and and it seems to be slow to boot.  First it checks for the IDE dirves which TAKES about 2 minutes, then it checks dmi verify data......
Then it says: boot from cd:
Ive check the bios and the settings are good.  Ive checked the cables and every thing is good.  I placed the xp pro disk in the cdrom and windows started up and LOADED, but after the computer reboots.  I get the same boot from cd: message.  Does any one have suggestions as to what I could be doing wrong? Is it a hardware prob?  Any help or tips would be great.You should set IDE 0 or 1 as the first boot device. It will boot faster and not check for the CD unless the harddrive fails to boot.I tried the following and I still get the same message followed by boot disk failure, insert sys disk and press enter.  Could the hd be bad?Did you format the harddrive before attempting to install Windows?WINXP loves loads of ram...is your ides cables the wrong way round.........red stripe towards the power plug...Yes, I did format the hd before installing windows.  As for the cables, I'll recheck it.do you have your ribbon connectors set right.  The primary ribbon cable must go to the boot drive. the boot drive must be the master on that conection.Here's where I stand now.  Ive reset the Bios.  The boot drive is on IDE1 of the mainboard.  the cdrom is on IDE2. In the bios, boot sequence is hdd-1 , then cdrom. Ive checked the ribbon cables and they are seated well and connections are good.  I reformatted the hd and inserted win xp pro disk. windows loads up but when the computer reboots, I get .  I ve only put 2 computers together in the past and I have never encountered this sort of problem.  Im at a stand still on this....plz helpIs it a legal copy of Windows XP?maybe the hard drive is on its way out>
run the APPROPRIATE disk diagnostic program
www.fujitsu.com
http://www.storage.ibm.com/hdd/support/download.htm
www.maxtor.com
www.seagate.com
www.wdc.com/service/ftp/drives.html
www.westerndigital.com
Thanks for the help.  Well I got everything working.  All I did was put the jumpers on the hd and cdrom to cable select instead of master. Seem to fix all my woes.  Thanks for the help fellas!!