[§triker]

I removed my sata hard drive that had xp installed on it and tried to boot from my xp disk, but now my computer will not even boot to the dell logo so that i can change the boot order. I've worked on computers for 2 decades now and this is a first for me. Anyone know what's up or had this happen before? BTW i swapped out motherboards with one that was identical and I got the same results.

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The newer computers will not even boot without having a hard drive hooked up in the computer. I have even had a intel D101GGCC MB that would not boot to a bad HD. It wouldn't even get to the Intel bios screen.

SRX660

[SRX660]

The newer computers will not even boot without having a hard drive hooked up in the computer. I have even had a intel D101GGCC MB that would not boot to a bad HD. It wouldn't even get to the Intel bios screen.

SRX660

[§triker]

Thanks, but there is another sata drive hooked up, just not the one with the operating system.

[SRX660]

Just a little chide, here. I hope you don't mind. You say you have 20 years of working with computers. Yet you do not tell a forum exactly what you have done to try correcting your problem. I must assume you think we can mind read at great distances. No mention of make, model, OS, or anything. I can only give information to others on the information they give me. DONE

Now to your problem. First, maybe the computer is booting to the OS and just not showing any video. Are the fans turning on at all? If nothing happens at all i would suspect that the power supply has failed. The next thing to check is the memory. Use a known good stick of memory to see if that is the problem. If that is not the problem and the motherboard has been replaced already, the processor has probably fried. In all the computers i have worked on i have seen only one fried CPU. It's really a matter of replacing parts until you find the bad part. That is why i keep quite an array of computer hardware around my shop. I can just about replace any hardware on most computers with known good pieces to test.

please let us know if you have done any of these test so we can move on to where your hardware problem lies.

SRX660

[§triker]

LOL, communication is not one of my strong points.... The comp is a dell 8400 and the computer boots to the point where the bios for the video card flashes and thats where it stops. I have the windows xp disk in the cd drive, but like I said, it will not make it to the setup option screen. All I did was remove the sata drive that had the operating system on it.