Hey Guys, if the hard drive goes bad and is not found by the computer, will the computer still boot up from the CD rom with the original Windows XP CD? I realize that the boot sequence has to be set to recognize the CD drive. The REASON I ask is that I posted here before about a hard drive that went bad. What I don't understand is that I could not get it to boot on the CD drive until I replaced the bad HD with a good one.

I am having a simliar problem now with a Dell Desk Top. Why would the computer not SEEM to find or boot from the CD drive?

Thanks
Sometimes EVEN if the boot order is correct in the BIOS it will still insist on booting to the HDD...
This can be caused by a few things:
Bad IDE cable...
Bad or failing CD drive...
Weak or failing CMOS battery not saving the BIOS changes...

The boot order is TIMER controlled so if thee first device has issues when a certain amount of time has gone by it will bump down to the SECOND device and so on and so on.

Hope this helps and Welcome Aboard !Thank you. That clears things up a bit for me.Is that you werfro ? ?