HDD boot failure - BIOS related?

Olehippy

Honorable
Oct 26, 2013
3
0
10,510
Am getting "Hard disk boot failure. Insert system disk and press enter" error. Abit IC7 MB, Western drives.

Bios priority set to FDD, then HDD, then CD. If SYST disk is placed in CD and the "press any key to boot from CD" msg is ignored, system boots from hard drive.

Have run fixboot, fixMBR, chkdsk etc. Have reformatted drive and reloaded XP. No change.

Replaced HDD, formatted, loaded, and same error.

Have cleared CMOS and started over. no change.

Have removed CD from BIOS boot priority, but CD always appears during boot just prior to HDD boot error msg.

Could this be a BIOS issue? Feels like boot priorities, although set correctly are not being executed.
 

Olehippy

Honorable
Oct 26, 2013
3
0
10,510