I formated drive and partitioned the drive, installed windows xp and is back to it's old self, but if I change bios settings to boot from hard disk as first boot device instead of cdrom (for instaling win xp) I get a "boot disk failer" error. If I have it boot cdrom as first device and hard drive second then restart it goes through start up then to "hit any key to boot from cd", but I do not press any buttons, then it will boot and I can remove disk and still all is good, until I restart, then I have to have the win xp cd in drive. Help????

Hi billy, check in Disk Management that your C: partition [your boot partition] is marked Active.

O.k. itsays healthy with (boot) as I typed it, if I right click mouse on it, I have the option to make active, Do I need to do this?. I attached a pic of disk management for you to see. Thanks so much for your help.

Yes, Billy, your system partition, C: usually, must be marked active otherwise the code in the MBR will not select that partition as the one to read the loaders from [ and hence ntldr, boot.ini...].
While you are in Disk Management console, remove the Active settings from both Disk 1 D: and Disk 3 H: because they do not have OS's on them. BIOS would not really be looking at them for MBR code because they are not the first Sata disk, or not the Master on the Primary controller if PATA, but still, it is neater.
A bit of confusion courtesy M$: the system partition is the one with the ntldr, boot.ini and other boot files, the boot partition is the one with the OS on it. It is the system partition which must be marked Active. For most folks system and boot are the same partition, C:.

ok, before I change this, I do not know why system and boot got seperated, the ethan miles drive is a hard drive for storage for my recording studio only, can I put boot and system on the system drive without having to reinstal?

If you just did a normal, out of the box, straightforward fresh installation of XP then your system and boot partitions are one and the same. Just check the the files ntldr, ntdetect.com and boot.ini exist in C: root, there will be others but those three should be there if you are to use C: as the boot loader [ie system] partition. In folder options you must uncheck Hide protected Op Sys files first.

I see what you are saying about the Ethan Miles [C:] partition though. Are you using PATA drives? The Primary and Secondary IDE controlled drives? And is Disk 0 the Master drive via jumper setting? Then Setup would make C: on Disk 0 [Master on Primary controller] the System partition. It would put the OS where you requested it to go... E:?
To get around that you make [by setting the jumper] Disk 2 Master on its controller, copy over those three files from C: and then set E; as the only active partition on your set. Should work. Your system and boot partitions would then be one and the same. No need to reinstall. You would have to modify boot.ini though.
When BIOS starts looking for an OS it checks on the first master disk for an MBR [there is an identical execution code in the MBR on each physical disk], loads that MBR code into memory and that code assumes control, checks your drives for the Active partition and then loads from it the boot sector code [all partitions have the same boot sector code...]. That code then gets ntldr placed into memory; it reads boot.ini, and so on. Your boot.ini would be pointing to E: on Disk 2.

No pata drives, disk (0) and disk (1) are regular hard drives ata/ide, and the disk (2) is sata. disk (3) is an internal ata/ide that i use as external in a usb converter that I can turn on and off. Not much on this here situation, I conscidered my self an advance user but never delt with this problem before,,, lol. So before I change anything I want to be clear on your instructions. I dont know what happened with the letter assignment cause "C" is usualy the master like you said. I am not clear on this part......"To get around that you make [by setting the jumper] Disk 2 Master on its controller, copy over those three files from C: and then set E; as the only active partition on your set. Should work. Your system and boot partitions would then be one and the same." I am going to check jumpers while you read,,, again, I can't thank you enough for the lesson and help!!!

Part two
attached is new disk management after jumper settings change. I changed nothing but jumpers until I confirm steps that I am not clear on..

Noted the new pic.
Ok, going with your last post, Disk 0 will be Master by jumper [or outer if using Cable Select] on the Primary Controller, Disk 3 is the Master [or CS outer] on Secondary, and CDROM the slave?
Fine. Initially, COPY the three files over to E: [leave the originals where they are...], make E: the only Active partition in the whole set, then modify boot.ini in E: to look like this:

[boot loader]
timeout=4
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(2)partition(1)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(2)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Home Edition" /noexecute=optin /fastdetect

Note carefully the numbers in the ().
The script in " " is what you se on the boot screen, can be anything you like...
If it all fails for some reason you willl still be able to boot with the cd....

ok, followed to a "t" but I cant make disk(1) sillybilly's storage, unactive, I did however make active my "E" drive but have not restarted yet,,,, a little nervouse,,,lol.

Modify boot.ini by going CP, System, Advanced tab, Startup and Recovery Settings button, Edit - boot.ini will open in Notepad. Modify it and Save.
But yeah, we could get into a lil problem with a mixed IDE and Sata disk set if trying to make the Sata drive contain both System and Boot partion. BIOS will see that IDE Active Disk 1 partition and get lost - you will get an error msg.
It may be that you will have to make C: Active as the System partition after all. The original boot.ini in C: would be already correct.
Can I go to bed now, please? It's 1:30 am here...