thanks for help F. I am so new to any of this, sorrry, from the begining, I could no longer log into windows page about a week ago,no safe mode either......pc was working very nice before this. I ran a diagnostic test from driver/utility disk that came with pc, and it pointed to an uncorrectable error. I format drive with a usb adapter kit on another pc and drive failed tests again so I purchased a new HDD. for some reason my oem os reinstall cd is not recognized in my cd/rom?but my driver / utility cd is?. I have a newer lap top that can see it fine though?...........some info,from (F-12) boot menu, choices are removable -floppy disk. next, 2 choices under hard disk. -sato-0 : wdc wd3200AAKX (new HDD) and -bootable add in cards. next choices are cd rom and utility partition. I elect cd rom but i get no boot device available with os disk. sato-0 installed,sato-1 installed, sato 4 and 5 read none. in my std cmos features,sato-0 my new and only HDD with correct 320GB capacity. sato-1 reads{HL-DT-ST DVD+/-RW GS} 0 capacity. sato 2 and 3 not present. 4 and 5 none.......I ran a diagnostics on new HDD and it passed all tests.not sure any of that info helps, but thought I would add it. .....I decided to try and use some zip files for ich9 and made a copy of my os disk with some drivers attached with nlite . it kind of worked! my cd rom drive read it and I went through the steps to load the operating system.... heres where the trouble starts, when I get to the part where pc is going to restart and run from HDD, I get unmountable-boot-volume........tried all the fixes, chkdsk/r,p fixboot,mbr............no luck. error is oxoooooed, followed by other #'s. sorrry for the long post, I am sure I left some things out. last info, I am in ide mode, reloaded defaults, my desktop is a 4 year old inspiron with intel G33 express chipset ICH9 6-port. thanks F vey impressive thread you have here!!! TOM. p.s. is it possible that the july 9 midnight deadline for fbi virus killed this pc? timing would have been perfect. I failed to test any of my pc's as all had nod32 antivirus5?....just burned a new copy of my oem xp sp2 he install disk WITHOUT adding any drivers from zipfile and it also failed to be recognized.