Hey I'm back with a problem it is that I reinstalled win xp pro and every thing was good untill i put in sp2 then rebooted now the bios stops at primary channel and a curser is there after nothing... I set to boot on the cd/rom but still nothing,
it checks out fine untill it hits the primary channel

Brustlhr

Hello Brustlhr Welcome to PCHF

Try unplugging your hard drive and booting then (with it unplugged). From the sounds of it, you may have a failing hard drive. I am betting when you unplug the hard drive, it will boot past where it got to, but will then say "no boot device" or something like that. Possibly plugging it back in may help.

Actually...

I would feel correct if I knew for sure that your hard drive was in the primary channel. What you really should do is unplug your primary IDE cable from the motherboard. The primary cable is the one closer to the CPU (the one further away from the edge of the motherboard). Usually the hard drive is on the primary channel. Just do what I said in the first paragraph if you find the hard drive is in fact on the primary IDE cable. ...

If unplugging the devices from the primary IDE channel doesn't work, try plugging them back in and then unplugging the second IDE channel and booting. I'm betting a device is failing, and preventing your computer from booting.

This problem isn't a symptom of your SP2 installation. If there was a problem with that, you would see something happen when Windows is loading.

Let's go from there

Ok I did unplug the sata primary and got past the first problem, it boots in to win cd, it wants to install win xp, i pluged the primary back in it install till boot then back to the same prob after i format the primary if it is the hd can i use secondary put it in pri and partition can i retreve the data in the secondary partition? or do i have to nuke everything in the second drive? Brustlhr

Umm...your wording is pretty confusing.

It sounds like you have 2 different hard drives. The first hard drive being the one that is having problems, and a second one which works ok. When you have the primary drive plugged in, it causes your computer to halt during boot up right?

If that is the case, then I'm betting your primary hard drive is just going bad. You'll probably just want to replace that hard drive.

If that isn't what you're saying, let me know a bit more clearly what is going on

the only way i can get acess to the cd rom is when i put in my cruzer flash drive then set up reads that as C:

So basically when your hard drive isn't being recognized by the computer as the primary boot device?

Do you have another hard drive you can test with?

If you can get it to boot off your cd-rom drive, you should go to your hard drive manufacturers website and download a diagnostic tool to check the stability of your hard drive. Once again, I'm betting your hard drive is bad.