I GOT IT!!!!!! WHOOOOO!!!! THANKS FOR THE SUGGESTION WM!!! it was an ide cable i used for my cd drive that was plugged into the raid port on the ide ports. the fact that it was reading the cd drive from there must have been giving the boot sector error. i was in such a hurry to get it together that i plugged it into the third one instead of the first and second one. thanks for your efforts guys!!!!!