unable to boot past floppy

[seawitch999]

removed and reformatted HD and upon reinstall,computer won't boot past "strike F1" message....light on floppy stays on ...both computer action lights stay on....after unplugging floppy,I only get blinking cursor in upper left corner,where the Ram was counted before and left computer action light remains on...now it seems the cdrom drive is not reading my restore disk.....could really use some help,here!....connections are good...Ram sticks removed and reseated....I clueless at this point.

 

[BongWizard]

is it essential that you load off the floppy? or can you get an install disk and boot it from the CD? have you got the BIOS set to use the floppy drive as the primary boot device? or even recognise the drive at all?

 

[superdave1984]

You may have killed the partition on the drive that the restore disk needs to install the OS when you formatted. Did the install complete? What shows up in your boot order in the BIOS?

 

[seawitch999]

Thanks for the quick reply!....apparently I wasn't clear enough.
the drive is empty,and the cpu will not go past the CDrom player to load my disk.
It does NOT appear to be reading the disk at all,partition or no partion...It only blinks once and screen says "press F1 for recovery",but nothing happens.
A cursor is blinking in the upper left hand of screen as if counting my memory,but no numbers are there counting up.This unit counts the memory and then loads Windows.
I'm stuck,here....heh,heh.

ps....there is no Bios at this time!

 

[KSoD]

What do you mean there is no BIOS? There has to be a BIOS to even start the boot process.

Windows XP or Vista? You have to fix the Windows boot.

 

[Nagasama]

try leaving the floppy unplugged from the beginning.

 

[seawitch999]

the floppy IS unplugged and it won't even read the restore disk in my CDROM.....so I have nothing in the HDrive... I can't access setup at all ....no F8,2,10,or 12....get me????
my CDROM drive blinks once......end of story...I just don't get it at all!

 

[BongWizard]

ok just as a test, ditch the CDROM, ditch the HDD, ditch the floppy, just for a second... just have one DIMM, your CPU, PSU and GPU connected... boot up the computer and see if you can get to the BIOS, if not you know one of these components is dead... most likely is your PSU or your RAM... if you can get to the BIOS, make sure you have floppy as first boot drive, HDD as second and something else as third... if you need to boot off a CD, you can hit F12 right after the POST screen

 

[KSoD]

If you have nothing on the hard drive how do you expect the system to boot? There is no boot record or boot files then!!!!

So yeah the system wont boot cause there is nothing on your hard drive. I dont know why you would expect a system to boot when there is nothing on the drive. You have to install Windows first in order for it to be able to boot from the hard drive.

So hitting F8, or any other function key wont work cause there is nothing to BOOT TO. At all. But you still dont answer any questions. What do you mean by no BIOS??????

Also please cut the attitude. We are trying to HELP you. With responses like that your answers will have as much respect to them as you give.

 

[Nagasama]

If you have nothing on the hard drive how do you expect the system to boot? There is no boot record or boot files then!!!!

another question...(mak can answer he is the neighborhood windows man)...
will a restore disc even work on a formatted hard drive? dont you actually have to have a copy of windows installed for it to work?