snail

Hi, my problem began with my PC not booting into windows but just running in a loop of starting up going into windows loading and then rebooting. I have put in the recovery disk which loads up all the files and then after it says its starting windows it then says there is no disk to write to. I have bought a new hdd and fitted that( and a new serial cable) but it's still the same. have i done something wrong or is it the motherboard? I also checked in the bios and could not see HDD's. I have a P4 3.4 Ghz on a Gigabyte motherboard running XP home if thats of any help.