okay, could be hardware problem, the IDE could be messed up. but if it was harddisk problem, computer would surely boot from RAM and notify that Hard Disk Faliure has occured. or some other hardware faliure. pink! do you hear your hard disk moving at all? when you start..you know that karyak kuruk sound? i might suggest you to make bootdisk for XP on floppy since you can't use CDROM. you need 7 1.5HD floppy disks after you make'em, go back to bios where you see your HT-DVD rom and all, and move your 3rd boot drive(FLOPPY) to first. then insert the first disk, shut down, restart...and change the floppy as you keep goin when boot asks next disk! since i don't know which version of XP you have and the service pack.. go here.. - http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=310994 find yours, whether XP pro, sp2 or 1, or xp home!