Long post, so apologies in advance but I'll give you a play by play of what I've done so that hopefully you can offer some insight on how to resolve this issue.

Working on a HP Pavillion, pretty much stock, about 5 years old. Acquired a virus that didn't seem to be malicious in terms of deleting files, etc but it would reboot the machine every few minutes. Ended up formatting both drives and attempted to install XP Professional. It would start the setup, format the partition, copy the necessary files to the Windows Install folder, and then reboot as it should. However, upon rebooting, you would not be taken to the blue Windows screen where you begin to 'customize', instead, it was stuck in a circle and went back to restarting setup. It was *not* booting off the CD, setup was just not happening.

Thought perhaps BIOS had issues or the motherboard was on the way out so I found another PC to work with (Sony) and moved that hard drive onto my computer. It booted up perfectly and worked fine. To me, that says it's not my computer. So I purchased a new hard drive and attempted to load XP onto that with my machine. No go. Moved the new hard drive onto the other machine and attempted again. No go. Switched to the other hard drive I had (originally D) and tried to load XP on that on the other computer. No go.

I had a suspicion that perhaps my CD was a bit off so I acquired XP Home with the SP2. I first tried to load that onto the new hard drive in the other computer. I was able to get through the complete install (or so I thought/think), yet when I arrived at the Desktop, I was only allowed to "Turn Off" or "Reboot" as "Standby" was grayed out. It reboots fine, but it cannot boot from the hard drive after it is powered off. It asks for a boot device. I tried this CD with both of my hard drives on both of the computers, same result.

This is where it goes above my head as I am unable to narrow down to where the problem is. The latest suggestion that I was given was issues with the Master Boot Record, that somehow it was turned off. I will be acquiring software to deal with that in the next few days, however, I was hoping that some of you may have some other insight.

I don't want to spend a few hundred dollars to have someone 'fix' this when I could easily buy another low end computer, but frankly, I don't have the money to buy either a new computer or pay someone to fix this. And honestly, it's just frustrating to think of paying someone to look at this when it doesn't seem (logically) to me that there should be a problem. I can handle a nasty file killing virus that destroys something beyond my ability to fix, but this, no-- (not sure if that made any sense).

Congrats if you've made it to the end of this. I would appreciate any and all suggestions (oh, and sympathy is also welcomed)

The only time setup can launch is if it is booting from the cd, the files to show these options: format, install, repair are located on the cd, and are not copied to your hard drive, only continuing installation files are copied.

as small as it is, check that the pin on the back of the hard drive is set to master (far left pair of pins) a non-master drive will not boot in most computers.

Try connecting only 1 hard drive, as a master, and run the XP install, format the drive using a full/long format... this will take some time. Then start the install. When your computer reboots, you should be given an option to boot from cd, ignore it, if you are not given this option, remove the cd for a moment until the setup (hopefully) continues.

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-William. § (marvin_gohan)

I'm sorry I wasn't more clear. I was referring to the part of set up where it reboots (as you just mentioned) and it (I thought) was booting from the HD (hence ignoring the 'Boot from CD' option)... this is what I meant by 'not booting from the CD'. I would remove the CD to let it continue setup and it would give me an error attempting to find a boot device.

I'll check out the pins in a few. But yes, I have used th full format on the partitions about 30 times... lots of quality time to sit and think

you could try running the repair option first, and at the prompt type fixmbr, if it is your MBR this should correct it, or let you know, but if the problem occurs with multiple drives it shouldn't be.

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-William. § (marvin_gohan)

I'm off to try that now. I'll be back

Well, after using the 'fixboot' and setting the HD to master, I have successfully reinstalled Windows. However, I cannot see the second slave drive now. Any ideas on this? It's not showing up in the disk manager either

check in bios, if it shows up there, it is likely a driver issue, you will need to find a raid or general mobo driver.

First i would suggest changing the pin sets though, different motherboards expect different setups, if it isn't working with the 2nd drive in slave (2nd from the left) try cable select (far right pins) if this doens't work, try placing it in sideways accross the top master and slave pin for an auto detect. If none of these work, then it's a driver issue.

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-William. § (marvin_gohan)

Alright, let's see...

It does not show up in BIOS. I changed the pin settings around and even tried for the auto-detect but whenever I did, it couldn't find the slave or the master. When I rebooted and checked BIOS the first time, my options were as follows: 'User type HDD' or 'Other Atapi device' in addition to the usual CD-ROM, etc.