Ok, I have tried Repair and everything known to man. Nothing works. So I have now installed a new clean hard drive and tried installing WinXP Pro on it and hopefully transferring the files to it from my old hard drive. Guess what? I cant get the O/S to install. It goes fine until Windows has to reboot then the black screen comes up and says to HIT enter to boot from CD. If I hit enter it starts to reinstall Windows from the start. If I dont hit enter it tells me there is a read error and Windows is not installed. I will add that all non-necessary hardware is unplugged.
Any idea how to over come this?
Cuz I am starting to believe this computer is jinxed and I am ready to take it to an exorcist Hi again. Well, I got my hands on yet another new hard drive. Yes, new hard drive number two! This time I managed to get Windows installed with no problems. AND my mouse and keyboard both work. I still dont know what the problem was or how to fix it but it doesnt matter anymore. Thanks for your time. You guys are great.Good News indeed...
I'd send the other drive in ASAP for a free replacement...most drive warranties start at 2 years minimum and go up from there.good to hear! I echo Patio's advice regarding a free replacement.

Some HD's escape the factory with severe flaws- usually during the Quality Assurance break period, where they replace the skilled Quality assurance testers with a few monkeys with hammers. Not the brightest management decision. Then again, I'd be hard pressed to find a bright management decision at most companies .

Are there any hammer dents Or simply look for banana residue on the connector pins...LOL the smell of bananas does seem to LINGER in the air around that drive

It would be interesting to find out what exactly happened or how to fix the original problem but, like I said, I dont care now Like I say, drive probably went banana's. Sometimes they will just randomly go fruity- and other times they'll STAY peachy for a long time. Oh well, I guess it's just a grape.. .I mean, gripe we have to live with.I think you got a Pomegranete...when I went walk climbing, I had to palm a granite, that's pretty close I think i spleeld it rong as WEL,,,Hey guys I have another wee problem in dealing with this issue. I have the new SATA drive with WinXP O/S installed and working fine. So I HOOK the problematic drive (the original one with the original issue) to get the files from it. This drive is actually 2 SATA drives hooked in RAID. Now when I boot Windows loads the O/S from the proper drive and recognizes the two drives, which is good. However, it wont read them. I assume its because they are in RAID with no RAID drivers. Any idea how to get those drivers from my floppy diskette into my machine ? Or any ideas what else can be done?why do you have them in RAID?Do you know what the driver is and where it is installed?
There's a neat utility called remove on boot which has got rid of unremovable files for me on a couple of occasions.
http://www.gibinsoft.net/gipoutils/
Regards*censored* it, didn't read the complete thread, sorry.
However, the removeonboot program still stands, and it gets rid of those so called unremovable files.Hi again. I have discovered that you can install these RAID drivers from the motherboard CD. Duh! What was I thinking? Anyway, everything is finally good. All my files are transferred and I am going to get rid of the RAID setup and make them two separate drives. The guy who built the computer set up the RAID for some reason and thats why they were in raid :/
Thanks again guys...this should be the last you hear from me in this thread.