I have a Western Digital WD400 drive that I am attempting to format.

It is a used drive, but it at present has no operating system on it.

I get to a screen that says "Missing Operating System" and cannot do
anything further.

In set-up Harddrive is first in the boot order, but I don't know if my
system actually does try to access it first.

The drive is set to Cabele Select and is on the second connector from
the end of the cable.(My DVD drive, with WindowsXP disk inside, is on
the end).

Any advice would be appreciated.

Thanks.

Darren Harris
Staten Island, New York.

Have a look here 'Repair and Clean Install Xp
(http://www.michaelstevenstech.com/cleanxpinstall.html)

You need to go into bios set up and make the CD rom drive the 1st boo
device... not the hard drive, otherwise it will continue to boot fro
hard drive, you can make the hard drive the 2nd boot device or disabl
it.

During the Xp installation you come to a point that say's 'Pleas
remove the disc' and the computer reboots, with no CD disc in th
computer will then boot from the next alternative drive - the har
drive (2nd boot device)....

... if you wish at this stage simply go into bios and set the har
drive as the 1st boot device, the rest of the drives can be disabled
since you will not be using these as a 1st boot device .... or you ca
do this after the end of the installation, as from now on you'll b
booting from the hard drive.

Don't forget you'll need the mobo chipset drivers after X
installation.

dav