HP Pavillion a1640n desktop

[20phileagles]

The mobo is P5BW-LA the machine was given to me w/out a HDD. I am trying to install a WD Caviar 500GB SATA. When I try to boot the machine up, I hit esc to enter boot menu and it shows the HDD and the cdrom with the cdrom as 1st master.. If I try to boot off the cd ( the HDD software), it says error cd drive not found and cd drivers not installed check cable and power. If I try to boot a windows xp disc, it reads ( loads) all the files up till setup begins then a blue screen with a stop error telling me to run chkdisk and the HDD is not properly configured. I have replaced many HDD and installed many os enough to know that it should be much much easier than this. Here is the link for all the specs if you need them to help me http://img.tomshardware.com/forum/uk/icones/message/icon10.gif. Also the cd drive was unplugged and I'm not sure which sata port to plug it into or if it makes a difference. I really, really appreciate the help in advance. Thanks. Hope I got the right sub category.

 

[roadrunner197069]

Well you need to make sure the bios is set to ide mode and not sata/raid/ or achi.

It sounds like it is running in one of the modes I mentioned,besides ide.

With xp everything besides ide needs a driver, so either do the ide mode, or get the sata drivers on a disk so you can hit f6 and install them.

 

[20phileagles]

Ya know, I almost gave up. That was exactly the problem (ide). I am currently installing WXP and am back on track. Thank you very much and I wish I could return the favor

 

[roadrunner197069]

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