[p71p]

Okay i am in bios. On boot menu it shows

CD/DVD ROM drive
Hard drive
Removable devices

On the main menu, not sure if this means anything, it shows

Primary master [None]
Secondary master [None]

Back in boot menu if i press Shift and 1 it enables or disables a device showing a ! next to the device. I have done the boot priority both with and without !

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Primary master [None]
Secondary master [None]

This does not look good for the MB
Running out of ideas I`m afraid, try removing and cleaning the contacts on the CD drive and clearing the BIOS by removing the MBs BIOS battery, on first boot you will have to change the boot sequence again, reset the time and date, save and exit.

[phillpower2]

Primary master [None]
Secondary master [None]

This does not look good for the MB
Running out of ideas I`m afraid, try removing and cleaning the contacts on the CD drive and clearing the BIOS by removing the MBs BIOS battery, on first boot you will have to change the boot sequence again, reset the time and date, save and exit.

[p71p]

Okay will try that. Thank you again for your help

[phillpower2]

You are welcome - good luck

[p71p]

After a complete strip down and clean up the secondary master is now showing CD/DVD. Primary is still none. I set the clock and am now booting from the XP disc. Starting to doubt it will work as i did notice what i think is water damage to the internals, white powder on components, cleaned it off so i will now see what happens trying to get XP on to HDD.

[p71p]

I think i spoke too soon, disc finished and i got

STOP: c0000221 unknown hard error\systemroot\system32\ntdll.dll

Going to do a search for the error code

[phillpower2]

As you are booting from the Xp disk it suggests that it is bad/has missing files etc.
Please note that being able to boot from disk will not automatically allow you to format the HDD (which must be done) and install the OS on it.