Try giving us the name of your bios if you can. Maybe we can be more specific.

It is a Intel GB850 board. And when I just tried to turn it on to get the boot version I got a screen I have seen many times.
"Boot screen version 4.0.17
Intel base code PXE-2.0 (build 083)
Client mac addr: (do I need to give these numbers?)
Guid: (more numbers)
PXE-MOF Exiting Intel PXE ROM
Boot failure system haulted.

And that is what comes on when I start up.

Now When I hit f8 when the Intel boot screen comes on I get the screen " What version of windows would you like to start ( or something to that effect)
With Windows XP as the option to use, If i hit f8 again in this screen it gose to the select " safe mode, safe mode with networking, safe mode with command prompt, last known config etc....
None of these work it goes to the "file is missing thing again I mentioned in an earlier post. I hope this can help. Thanks, Guys

Whoa, back up a sec here. The last line of your POST says 'Boot failure system halted'?

I'd say you have more than an OS problem here if you're failing your POST sequence. At least, that's what it looks like to me.

Ok I looked up how to get to the BIOS setup on your board...from the Intel site: Boot-up the computer and press "F2" to run Setup.

"Boot-up" meaning immediately after you turn the PC on you can start tapping F2 like once every two seconds...normally you would get a message stating "Entering Setup". If it goes to the Windows startup options you've missed it...reboot, try again until you get to the BIOS setup. This is where you should be able to find the boot order options. F8 from the "Intel screen" sounds like it just gives you a OS boot menu, you need to hit F2 to get to the BIOS setup so you can pick which device boots first so you can pick the cdrom and boot the XP cd.

I get to the boot option sometimes but there is no cd-rom option in the list. I have checked all of the tabs across to top of the boot screen and I'm pretty sure I have seen the right option while moving through the screens.
Just removable device, Hard drive and the Intel board option.

If my board is trashed, what do you think is a good P4 board that I could use my 1.8 processor in? I'm about ready to just start over with a new board. I have a new 80 gig hard drive to start with so I don't bring the problem with me. Thanks again, Mark

Intel boards use the Phoenix bios. The boot options are on the next to rightmost tab called "Boot" and the option is Boot priority. If your Atapi CD rom doen't show up there go to the "Advanced Tab" then "IDE Configuration" and the first option on that page is IDE controller and make sure that "Both" is selected. Down below on this page it should show you what IDE drives it has detected on start up. If you see both your hard drive and CD Rom drive there. If you needed to change the "IDE Configuration" setting you will need to save and reboot before you can see what drives were detected.

I almost always use Intel boards in the business systems I build and have had very good luck over the years. I also use Gigabyte Boards at times. I think Intel has it for the most straight-forward setups. Just my opinion. The needs for all-out gamers are a little different, so I won't try to speak to that.

I got it to boot to the cd-rom and the windows start up screen comes up and it loads the files. Then it says it can't find my hard drive. I think I need a basic lesson on hard drive connection as I have moved them around on the ide cables so much that I am not sure I have it connected to the right end (or middle of the cable). I would love to just put in my new 80 gig drive and start over with a clean drive. I can load the rest of the stuff after I get the op sys in. I think 'Im getting there. Thanks again, Mark

Well, glad to hear you're making progress. The install of the hard drive depends on what hard drive you have and what cables you are using. One way or another, each drive can be configured as a Master, Slave or put in Cable Select mode. On each cable, there can be only 1 master and 1 slave drive, or 2 drives can be set to Cable Select mode. In Cable Select mode, the position in the Cable that the drive is plugged into determines whether it functions Master or Slave. BUT in order to use Cable Select Mode, you must be using a Cable Select cable! You can tell if you have a Cable select cable, by looking at the drive ends of the cable. Normally the End or last connection "Master" will have be colored black and the middle connection will be colored grey. Standard IDE cables use the same color for each plug. Check the drive manufacture's setting for placement of the jumpers to determine how to set your drive. They normally come configured as "Master" out of the box. Make sure that the drive shows up in the bios on bootup before you bother trying to install Windows. See my last post for where you can see that.

I was able to get to the install screen and start the install on a new hard drive, but when it gets to about 38% of installing the files it says cannot install file (blah blah) and it keeps doing that for the rest of the files if you try to skip the file. I had my had drives checked at Comp USA and they were able to see and access them as slaves on their computer.

I have a question that may have something to do with this problem. If I have reinstalled xp on a new machine, does windows have a timer built in to shut down access after ? many starts? As in disable the hard drive to make it unbootable? I think I have heard this may be a way to stop multi-installs of a single copy of xp on a new machine. Thanks for any input, Mark

There is no such timer in Windows XP. XP only checks to see if you have registered that copy before when you activate it online. It now sounds more like a bad install cd. Suggest you try cleaning it. Look for scratches. To clean it, use a soft cloth and dampen it, then wipe straight from the center of the disk to the outside edge, don't wipe around the disk. Other possiblilities, bad CD player, bad controller, bad hard drive. (You can't tell if a hard drive is good just by seeing if you can access it as a slave. This only means that it's not TOTALLY bad. You need to perform a disk surface scan on it to write and read information to every part of it to truly check it. This is time intensive on a big drive and requires speciallized software. Chkdsk has a non destructive version if windows is running.)