SimY76

Gave it a try. Just not happening. Could this be a bios problem?

I have another IDE hdd drive on its way to see of that helps But I'm thinking I'm still going to have the same problem. Has anybody got any other idea on why the DVD drive is only Booting when hdd disconnected. As others have said, it shouldn't Matter what's on the hard drive. Really stuck on this. Cheers simon

Sorry ken, yes I do save after bios :)

Hi there and thanks for the speedy replies. Yes, the hdd is set to primary mater and the dvd is set to secondary master. I originally had a second hdd which i installed win 7 on it no bother only to realize that i had left my other hdd connected and it, resulting with the win7 install using the xp boot file on the other disk. that Now hdd has a bad connection on the back because i was trying to get into xp to format it. Not had much luck ! every thing ive tried doesnt work. I have even bought a ide to usb conection adapter to use with my laptop but im sure its a bit temperamental . It does the connection sound with nothing showing up in my computer. you can see how its easy to get away from what im trying to fix. Im now trying to fix the things that are meant to help me fix the original problem.

I'm really hoping that someone can help me on this. Ive been trying to install windows 7 on a older pc with IDE hdd's and for a reason i cant really remember, i mucked up the install. I half installed win 7 over the top of xp and i think the power was cut to the computer, so now i have 2 windows at boot with it asking do i want win 7 or older versions of windows. The xp was still worked but the win 7 needed repaired which wouldn't work so i was trying to get a way of formatting the hdd for a clean install. I downloaded easy bcd to delete the win 7 boot to get rid of win7 at boot and proceed with a clean install. Now with my bios set to dvd rom first i can only get the windows boot manager saying it failed to start and to put your win installation disk and restart computer. The problem is, even when i set boot sequence correct with disk in it, always goes back to this screen. When i disconnect the hdd it boots from cd no bother.Really dont get it. [ATTACH=CONFIG]802.vB5-legacyid=1592[/ATTACH] I know there's probably a easy explanation for this so, if you can help me would be much appreciated. SimY76