How this this for a beginning?
I am working on a P3 with a Western HDD WD2500JB / WD Cavier SE. It has XP Pro and a DVD RW with a seperate CD ROM.
I was able to get into BIOS once and dummy here, did not set it to load CD or floppy first. I did notice that it is set to load HDD first. I tried to recreate getting BIOS and only got the error message above, or that I needed to put a bootable disk in the A: drive. When I got the A: drive error, the only buttons I could push and not have a repeat of the A: error was F11 and F12, but of course nothing happened. F8 will not even think of working. I checked the floppy drive with another one and it is working OK. The master CD rom is the DVD burner. I checked all connections many times, and have tried all different combinations of what is plugged in and what is not. I have checked jumpers. When I got the BIOS to come up everything was unplugged, even the HDD, except the A: drive and only one stick of RAM. Someone had put the cable in backwards and it was non-responsive. It was weird, but the stick of RAM was a 64 but BIOS said it was 128. I went through all the sticks of RAM individually in all slots, the other two stick are 128 for sure, to make sure the trouble was not a bad stick. I have a diagnostic CD from Western Digital for this HDD that will not work because it will not try to boot past the HDD. I have a Norton's Ghost Boot disk and a Windows XP boot disk that will not work. I have a disk with chkdsk on it too. Again, none will work because I cannot get past the HDD boot. I attached an old 2 gig HDD that did not have an operating system to the same strip and that was the message I got, no operating system.
I know I am missing something. I guess my questions are:
1. What have I not tried yet?
2. Is there anyway to reset a HDD? (Hopefully without wiping out anymore than what might be gone)

Hi welcome to the forum in the bios duz it detect the hard drive in a few differnet modes? it normally duz and the setting are different try boot with all options sounds like the cylinder, head and sectors maybe wrong. Do you need the info on the hard drive?

I cannot get into BIOS. Only that one time and not again. I even read, on another site, where if you take out the battery for 30 seconds it will help. NOT!

My brain is done for the day unless I get a huge light bulb hovering above it!
Any other thoughts???

so do you get any display at all? some times removing the battery for 30 seconds is on enough time the motherboard some times hols some charge in it. try removing the battery and hold the power button in for 30 seconds with out the PC being pluged into the power