Building New System...hardware Problem

[Daevion]

I'm right in the midst of building a new PC.....the hardware is installed.....on boot up I get this error message

"BOOTMGR missing"

press ctrl-alt-del

the previous error message was:

"NTLDR is missing"

press ctrl-alt-delete

then I can't get any further.....I cant even get into the winxp pro cd to do a repair. In fact none of my winxp cd's work.

I even tried reformatting the HD using a HD Sata enclosure conected to my laptop but nothing. Actually before I reformatted I had winxp pro already on the HD tho I wasn't able to boot into windows at all. I did use a seagate disc wizard utility and I was able to set up a bootable partition and format ( theoretically). I wondering if that utility messed up the HD's MBR somehow? Built many boxes in the past never encountered this problem till now! lol

the specs of the system:

AMD dual core 3 GHZ

Asus MSN-E mobo nvida nforce 570 ultra chipset

2 Gigs of DDR2 800 (Mushkin)

EVGA Nvida 8600GT 512MB PCI-E vidcard

Antec Ninehundred gaming case

PSU is a piece of crap 450 W Okia ( It came with the case...but Im replacing very soon! )

HD is a Seagate Barracuda (SataII) 320 GB

No floppy drive ( didn't think I needed it )

I've been all over the tech forums trying to find a solution but so far no luck. I know there's alot of tech savvy dgn'rs so I figured what the hell maybe some knows. Also I can't find my xp recovery cd.....kicking myself for that!

Please help!!

Is it possible that the PSU is causing the issue?

[nilhil_glory]

i would say you need to reload windows completly

that i think would do it

[Msterbeau]

Operator error.

[Gaf The Horse With Tears]

Is your BIOS set to have the CD-Rom be the first boot device?

You have to boot from the CD first... delete existing partitions, format and reinstall. Or Boot from the CD and do a repair install.

It really sounds like you are trying to boot from the HD rather than the XP-Cd

[Daevion]

Is your BIOS set to have the CD-Rom be the first boot device?

You have to boot from the CD first... delete existing partitions, format and reinstall. Or Boot from the CD and do a repair install.

It really sounds like you are trying to boot from the HD rather than the XP-Cd

I had boot device set for cd......for some reason it didn't work with the sata dvd drive I have....could be it needed a bios update...don't know.

I solved the problem with a legacy ide cdrw i had laying around.....that worked fine!

I have everything up and running now with only a few "minor" issues. I'm replacing the crap psu with a better one soon and I think this HD i have is not working as expected since its only showing half its total drive space.....grrrrr

also going to do a R install from xpcd to see if i can access to the other half of my HD!

[Daevion]

Nevermind.....everything workiing as intended now....nothing to see here...move alone!!! thx for the info!

[Gaf The Horse With Tears]

I think you might need a BIOS update before you ever going to a SATA optical drive in the boot sequance.

[Daevion]

Success!! My new rig is purring like a kitten even with the crappy psu!

[Gaf The Horse With Tears]

grats

[pharoh]

grats

Update your bios setting and then make a ghost image of your ide drive, and then you can image your sata drive. It will save you some time in the long run so you don't have to install everything again.

If you have problems detecting the sata drive after that, then you can go ahead and go into your bios seting and there should be a setting to read your sata drive as if it was an IDE. I don't remember the name of the setting at the moment, but it's different for each bios as well (phoenix, award, etc). Let me know if you can't get it, you can bring it over here and I'll help ya worse case scenerio