I just finished building my first barebones computer and I can't get past the BIOS menu.  When I put the Vista DVD in the DRIVE, I got a "drive not recognized, check cable" error and below that "please insert bootable disk".  I have set the BIOS boot order to look for the DVD drive and no joy.

I am using:

Intel motherboard D945GCPE
Intel Pentium Dual Core 2 GHzCPU-E2180
Ultra 1024 MB PC4200 DDR2 533MHz Memory (x2)
Western Digital Caviar SE 160GB HD,7200, 8 MB SATA-300

Thanks for any help you can give!



Check if the drive is being recognised in the BIOS.
Try another IDE cable.
Make sure the drive is jumpered correctly.I replaced the IDE cable and BIOS recognized the drive!  (Western Digital's Caviar SE 160GB HD does not have jumpers apparently)---But when we put the Vista DVD in, we got the following error  :

PXE-E61:  Media Test Failure
PXE-M0F:  Exiting PXE ROM

No bootable device---insert boot disk and press any key

Not a clue what to do next...Go BACK to BIOS. Make sure, that the boot order reads: floppy, CD, HD
Disable Boot from Network (wording is different on every machine, may say Integrated NIC, Network, PXE-xxxxxxx)It's a SATA drive...you didn't state that originally.That's weird.  I see "SATA" on the LAST line of the information I submitted on my system.  Sorry if it didn't show up for you.Thank you both so much!!  It's loading!!    We are so grateful for your help.I'm glad, you fixed it. What exactly did you change in BIOS?I changed the boot order from:

DVD:
A:
C:

to:

A:
DVD:
C:
and I disabled the option "Boot to Network"

Vista is doing its THING now.  I'll be back in touch if there are any more issues.  My son and I are doing the happy dance now.   Great 
I think, this:
Quote

I disabled the option "Boot to Network"

That's weird.  I see "SATA" on the last line of the information I submitted on my system.  Sorry if it didn't show up for you.