Boot from CD..... (not supposed to)

[Syrillian]

Hi,

I'm not sure if my problem is hardware or software, so I will start here. I am building a budget Rig so that I can experiment with Xandros.

The facts so far:

MSI K8MM-V MoBo
AMD Sempron 2800+ / stock cooling
256MB generic RAM
WD 80GB HDD (had an old XP OS on it)
Samsung DVD combo
Antec TruePower 430W
Basic PS/2 Keyboard
USB mouse
Old 17" CRT
Antec case

BIOS detects all hardware accordingly

Boot sequence is HDD, Optical Drive, Floppy is disabled as I do not have one installed.

HDD is IDE 0, Optical is IDE1

I downloaded the Xandros 3.0 file, verified it with a checksum then burned the .iso image to a CD

Loaded the OS (instructed the installation to take over the entire disk) and the process seemed to complete successfully. When it is done the system instructs me to remove the CD and press the [ENTER] key to restart.

When I do the system POSTS then states that it is updating ECSC and is succesful. Then it starts to verify the DMI Pool Data.... and an info line on the monitor says that it is booting from CD (not supposed to?). It fails (Boot failure, insert system disk and press [ENTER].

I want the system to boot from the HDD

I have tried several things:
Verified that the boot sequence is HDD then CD
Disabled the CD drive in the BIOS
Physically disconnect the CD and disabled it in the BIOS
Reset the CMOS using the jumper
Re-verified the Boot sequence in the BIOS

I can not get the OS to load.

I loaded the Xandros OS again with an Express Install, still the same issue.

I think that this may be a hardware problem....Does anyone have any experience with this type of issue, because I am just guessing?

Should I exchange the MoBo and try again?

Any insight would be appreciated.

 

[Nitestick]

to me it sound like you need to install a boot loader like grub or lilo. don't ask me about it. i've never actually installed it seperately as all distro's i've used install the boot loader automatically.