Need a little help with an older machine...

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Silas_Parrish

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Hello, hello!
I promise that one of these days I'll start contributing to the forums, instead of just asking questions...but that day'll have to wait until I've got some of that "expertise" people are always talkin' about.

Anyhoo...
My church is tiny, with like fifteen regular members, and we do not have a pianist. Instead, we use old computers and Windows Media Player to play music from our little AV booth in the back.

The machine that we were using, a fifteen year old laptop, has finally given up the ghost, so to speak. Now I'm building a desktop out of some spare parts to replace it.

All the hardware's in its proper place, with jumpers set appropriately. Problem is, it refuses to boot from CD. I know it's not a problem with any of my boot disks; I've tried putting Xubuntu 10.04, Ubuntu 9.10, and Windows XP Home Edition (SP2, I think...)

Each of these disks have been tested and used in other machines. Even when I unplug the HDD, and leave only the CD drive connected, I get nothing. I finally threw my hands up, and connected the HDD to another machine--a working one.

After disconnecting the HDDs from this machine, I hooked up the problem drive and managed to install Windows successfully. Then I put it back into the old machine, and hoped for the best.

I still got nothing. Now it won't boot from the CD or the HDD. Any ideas?
 
Have you got anything POST-wise?

@Muffin: CD was set as the ONLY boot device. I disabled the HDDs in my frustration...and it still won't boot from disk.
@kmote: It beeps exactly once, then tries to go to the boot menu.
Thanks for the replies, guys. I wish it were that simple.

I moved some things around...and got it to show Windows in the boot loader. But when I select XP home it locks up and doesn't go anywhere. I haven't tried this with Linux installed, yet.

I guess I can connect the drives to another machine to load Ubuntu or Xubuntu...but I have this sneaking suspicion that the problem will persist. Any ideas?
 
Put the hard drive back in the machine you used to install XP on it. Then follow the steps listed here to use SYSPREP so you can move the drive to the "new" computer.
 
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