can't boot from disk drive!

[jagster]

just bought my pc and put it all together, and set the bios boot order so CD-ROM is 1st boot device

then i restarted the pc, inserted the windows xp installation disc but says: "Disk Boot Failure, Insert System Disk and Press Enter"

any ideas???

[FatalSaviour]

Did you press any key when the Windows Installation Disk prompted you. This message normally crops up when it can't find anything to boot from, espcially if it's looking on your hard drives first for some reason, even though you say you've set your CDROM as first boot device.

[ctid]

Have you installed SATA drivers? It is probably doing it because it can't find a harddrive to install to. Other than that, is the XP disc scratched or anything? Maybe you should try hexus.help next time as well

[Koolpc]

Either press enter when it asks you to boot from CD or I would say you could have a scratched CD.

[jagster]

it does not ask me to boot from the cd at all! and the disk is not scratched as i just tried it in my laptop and worked fine, as for drivers i was told i needed to install them off a floppy disc that comes with the motherboard, but there isnt one, just a cd?

[Koolpc]

So, you have a Sata Hard Drive? Sometimes you need to access the CD and then make a floppy of the Sata drivers from it.

What spec is your pc / Motherboard etc?

[BUFF]

on the Asus CD there should be a utility for making a SATA driver CD.
However you only need that if you want to run RAID or use SATA features like NCQ, etc. as nF4 has basic native SATA suport for single SATA drives.

Even then it's not going to resolve your issue of not booting from CD.
Do you have only 1 optical drive or might you have 2 & selected the wrong 1 as no.1 boot device?

[jagster]

i have a asus a8n-sli motherboard with amd athlon 64 3200+ processor, i have just inserted the disc that came with the mother board and gave me a list of options:

1) make sil 3114 32bit SATA/RAID Driver Disk
2) make sil 3114 64bit SATA/RAID Driver Disk
3) make nvidia xp raid driver disk
4) make nvidia 2003 raid driver disk
5) make nvidia 64bit xp raid driver disk
6) make nvidia 64bit 2003 Raid driver disk
8) format floppy disk
9) FreeDOS command Prompt

which do i choose, i am only using 1 hdd

edit: my hdd is a maxtor diamondMax 10 SATA

[BUFF]

as i said with only single SATA drives on nF4 there is no need for a SATA driver at all as it has basic native support.

[jagster]

think i know what the problem is.... the cd was not made bootable with system fles, so will fix this!!

[FatalSaviour]

That would do it. Was it a copy of an XP disc, or have you been slipstreaming?
If the latter, nlite will help you slipstream, and will make a bootable ISO for you