IBM Won't Boot

[m1a1x1s]

I am fixing my friend computer and I ran scandisk and found he had like 1/4 his drive bad sectors. So I ordered a HD and 128mb of RAM (he wanted 256 in his system). (Ordered off of Newegg)
So I installed the drive and at first boot put in the Windows XP Pro cd and when it started to copying of files said that it "COULD NOT COPY FILE *****.EXE or whatever. I tried it again and again and it wouldn't get past it. So I put in my cd rom and it installed and ran fine for about 4-5 reboots. On the 5th one i got an image of a floppy with an arrow and it said Press F1 to Repeat Start Up Prosses or something like that. I pressed F1 and nothing happened. So I put in a Win 98 boot disk and did an fdisk. I deleted the partition and then created one. I restarted like it told me too and when I went back into the fdisk it said No Partition Found. I also did the partition from the Windows XP cd and it doesn't let me partition the drive. I need to get his computer fixed!!!! I'm going nuts trying to figure this out. I cleared CMOS and i took out the RAM. Nothing it just Flashes the Floopy image.


Thanks in advace and sorry for all the details, i'm just really stressed out.

[bailey]

are you useing the xp cd that came with the system or a copy of a differant one

[originel]

just to check and make sure...the hd is setup correctly and being recognized by the bios, right? also what boot order is everything set to in the BIOS? you might try changing that around some. is the cd scratched or anything?

am i correct in assuming that it will always boot from the dos floppy?

[cadetstimp]

Just an idea....

Maybe the drive is ok but you're having controller problems.

If you HDD is connected to PRI IDE...try connecting to SEC channel and see if you have the same problem. If you have an IDE/ATAPI PCI controller, even better... see if it works.

[m1a1x1s]

hey guys the bios picks it up. the cd is fine i just installed xp on another machine. and i have already tried switching the cables. could this be a virus?

[originel]

i highly doubt it. bios virii are very rare and are very difficult to infect. they're completely different than a virus you would get in windows.

is the cd drive ok? it could be the laser is having issues. also are you sure you have enough room on your partition for all the files? i'm pretty sure it would give you that error message if you were out of hard drive space too.

[m1a1x1s]

it's a 40 gb hd. the main thing that has me really worried is the fact that when you go into fdisk and delete and then create a partition on restart there is no partition. same thing happens from the cd

[originel]

here's another thought...bad hard drive maybe? it's the new device in the system and introduced a bug so it seems plausible, especially since it's not saving your partitioning scheme. just a thought anyways. is it making any odd sounds?

[m1a1x1s]

no bad sounds...it could be the HD i suppose. for some reason i think it is on the system because of the messed up HD that was on there before. and somehow burried itself somewhere in the chipset or something like that any other ideas???