Ok, i have a Un labled VIA Socket 370 Motherboard, With a pentium III Processor (800MHz.) I had received it from my employer whom had been running WINDOWS 98 on it. I had a perfectly good copy of XP laying around, so i THREW in some compatiable RAM, a larger HD, and poped the CD in, at first it occured to me that it was taking longer to mount the setup files to the RAM then it did with my pentium II which i had installed XP fine. I ignored this and left it to sit, however once it restarted i received a message like "Opperating system not found" I checked my BIOS and its set to read my HD, do you think its the drive? If so any one know where i can get a program to wipe it and start from scratch? Its a Maxtor 120GB IDEE. Let me know what you guys think the PROBLE is with the install.'


Thanks,
Johnthe option to reformat the HD is on the XP CD.indeed, however it usualy takes 2 hrs to get to the format phase, i was wondering what the issue is with the MoBo itself, but thanks for the tip  it may just be the optical drive, unless you have verified that it worked correctly before hooking it up to this motherboard.hmmm. i have tried 4 opticle drives, including a low power DVD drive, and all seem to be spinning the disk at a higher rate of SPEED than normal, however i will try again.

btw. thx for the help homerare the jumpers set correctly on the harddrive? is the IDE cable plugged into the correct IDE connector on both the optical drive(s) and harddrive? my last mobo had 2 IDE CONNECTORS on it, when XP didnt install correctly i had no idea what was causing it, little did i know that i plugged my optical drives in the IDE slot meant for the HD. hehe. i will go try tht. was outside decorating my house. thx homer!