Cant get computer to boot on xp?

I bought a computer at a yard sale today for $25.00.

Its a cisnet.

When i got it home i hooked it up and no luck. it will show the screen that tells what cpu i have how much ram i have then its checks the ide for like 30-45 seconds. After it checks this. It goes to a sacreen that says hardware monitor. verifying Dmi pool data....................
Disk boot failure, insert system disk and press enter.

So i went in the bios and change the first boot device to hdd0. After this i thought maybe it didnt have a os on it.So i loaded xp on this drive after formatting it.
Nothing.

So then i hooked up a external hard drive that i bought at the same yard sale it was nib still had the wrapping on it. Loaded xp on it. Then went in to bios and told it to boot off of USB-HDD same problem as before?


Still nothing. I cant figure it out. Im not a genius but i know a little bit. The only reason i got this computer was to screw around with it.


It has a biostar u8668-d motherboard.
Intel celeron d processor. 3.06ghz
1 gb of ram i added 512mb to it. It would boot even with the stock 512 that was in it.

Im stumped on this i am going to try and update the bios on it when this thunderstorm passes.

Can i update it with a usb drive. Like i said im no professional just wanting to practice overclocking this thing.

If you have any idea what is wrong with this think it would be much appreciated.

Since that is a retail system, it won't have any overclocking options. So if you bought it for that, you will be sorely disappointed and I hope you didn't pay too much for it.

I'm also confused as to what you tried. You did a full install of XP and can't boot to it? To do a full install, you have to restart after it copies the files. That would mean that it booted from the drive at least once.

So after it copies all of the files and reboots. What am i supposed to do then?

Like i said im a noobie.

It sounds me to that you aren't finishing the install process. The first reboot it does when installing is to boot into the install GUI.

You need to make the CD your primary boot device and then do the install, following all of its prompts. When it is done it will boot into windows.

LOL. Im a idiot.

Thanks guys. Ill try that and post what happens.

Ok i let it copy all the files. The reboot and it just brings me right back to the this will setup you computer so xp can be installed on it screen. And its like a never ending loop. Am i doing something wrong?

I found out what is was bad hard drive. LOL all day to find that out but at least i have it running. Now.


Thanks to all that helped.