I am builng my fourh Machine. Everything Went well until start-up. it takes about 4 minutes. Everything runs fine once booted. Oh1 and it only boots if windows XP CD is in drive.

Done the CMOS bit, changed the boot sequence to floppy/HDD/CDROM, but the S*D still boots using CDROM.

CPU is AMD 64x2 4200+, with compatible DDR2 RAM & MSI M/B

Any Ideas PLEASE

How is the BIOS set to recognize the hdd?

dcc
BIOS set to auto find drives. I went in and manually searched from within BIOS which found drives OK. I have now reflashed BIOS with same version. Boot up time now 2 minutes or so. But still won't boot without windows CD in Drive. Even though I have been in and changed boot drive priority to floppy/HDD/CDROM. it boots a little faster obviously with floppy/CDROM/HDD.
So although P.O.S.T seems to be working and recognises drives, BIOS is seems to see my drive priority changes, it does see/accept HDD when it tries to boot.
Regards
DukeOfE

I missed the 01 when I first read this, are you running raid 0+1? If so try running on just the hdd you have the OS on.

Solved at last. Followed Catweazle guide and took machine back to bare bones. The culprit was the last item connected, the DVDRW (LITE-ON DVDRW LH-20A1H). It Didn't like being setup as a slave drive. Had to set it up as secondary master. I've had LITE_ON drives before but not with this problem.
Thanx to dcc for responding an to Catweazle Guide

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