I’m trying to reload Windows XP on a Dell Dimension 2400 PC and it will not recognize the CD-ROM as a boot device. I have it listed first in the boot order, there are two optical drives, I have them set up as master/slave. Boot cd is in the Master. It is connected to the secondary IDE controller on Mobo. I have tried disconnecting the slave drive, I formatted the HDD on my other PC. I have tried all of this with both optical drives and multiple boot disks. I have the original Dell reinstallation disk. I have tried to reset the BIOS to factory defaults. I have had the jumpers set to cable select. I have swapped out RAM. I have cleaned out the guts of the PC. I have swapped hard drives out (both 80gb, on WD other Seagate). I have tried pressing F12 twice(in another discussion). I do not get the “press any key to boot from cd” comment. I get “Master boot record error Press a key” (hard drive has been formatted). I press a key and get “strike F1 to retry boot, F2 for setup utility” if I press F1, I keep getting the same thing. Any suggestions?
