My computer has a startup problem, I need the windows xp disk in to startup otherwise it says "BOOT DISK ERROR, INSERT SYSTEM DISK" something along those lines.
Thanks in advance
If there isn't it sounds like your hard drive has failed or is not correctly connected, check all cables including power to ensure they are correctly connected.
Quite immaterial, if the boot order is 1. Floppy, 2. CD-Rom, 3. HDD and there is no bootable floppy or bootable disk in the rom drive it will boot from the HDD, this isn't happening, so he puts the cd in and in the boot order that is the first bootable device encountered.
It still means he is unable to boot from the HDD.
@ OP, you do have the HDD in your boot order as a bootable device don't you?? Is the HDD you are trying to boot from recognised in the bios?
I think your partition table is corrupted - this can happen due to a boot virus or if somehow power was disrupted while writing to disk. You can try to repair your partition table using Partition Table Doctor for $39.