umm please help!

[XJ]

(i posted this in the 'general hardware' forum but they are dead. so i thought i would try it in here to get a response.)

Here's the deal. I've juse built my new pc (2100/8rda/yadda yadda)
After finishing installing it all i booted, and it all posts fine. i can fiddle with the bios etc. My harddrive is a WD 40GB, i bought it from a local shop and obviously it has been used before for testing etc because it goes to load windows2000, and a few seconds in it comes up with a BSOD and 'innacessable boot device'.
i tried it with my other HD to see if it was b0rked but that one does the same and i also tried it with different cables. i'm not using a floppy, but i didnt think that matters. what i want it to do is to boot from the windowsxp-pro disc in the cd-rom, but i cannot get it to format and install, i can't find the opportunity to do that.
now i know you'll probably all flame me with 'omg nub' etc but we all have to start somewhere. basically i need someone to help out and tell me how to go about this, i can put a floppy in etc if needed and create whatever discs i need to from this 'puter. i just need help!!

 

[The Coolest]

You just put in the XP disc. go into the BIOS and turn off anything that has floppy written on it. Then in the BIOS go to the part where you select the boot devices, and select the CDROM drive to be first device (or at least before IDE 0) then it should boot with the CDROM and ask you to press any key to boot from disc, press the Any key . When it enters setup it will display a dialog, with 3 options, install, repair and quit. pick Install and continue. Later on it will ask you for the drive that you want the installation to be put on. pick the drive you want. if the drive is not formatted/has any other OS on it, it'll prompt you about this, just press C to continue. somewhere there you'll have the option to format the drive into the filesystem of your choice. basically that's what you need. it'll format the drive and will install winxp as it would usually do on a new drive.

*EDIT:* Typos fixed :|

 

[Bruno]

Make sure the jumpers are set to master. And check that the bios is set to boot from HDD 0.

 

[Ben721]

Or you can bootup from the floppy drive, and format from there.

 

[XJ]

aarrgg!
it goes into the 'verifying dml pool data' or whatever it is, then underneath it says 'boot from cd-rom' but i cannot do anything becase it continues booting into w2000 about 3 seconds after that.
i really do not know what to do.
anyone know how to make a windows xp boot disc? (floppy)

 

[The Coolest]

Here's a source for all the M$ boot disks I can personally think of and more
http://www.mirrors.org/archived_software/www.bootdisk.com/original.htm