I have a refurbished PC with no OS. The first time I started it, it said there was no boot device. I put a Win2000 installation CD in the drive and it booted. I installed Win2000 using all of the defaults. It boots if I leave the CD in the drive, but it says there is no boot device when the CD drive is empty. Three or four years ago I might have known what to do but today I'm completely stumped. Any ideas?

Thanks,
Sixto
95 S420
91 300SE
87 300SDL
83 300SD

Your computer has a MBR (master boot record) written to the disc you installed windows in a small space called the boot sector at the beginning of the drive. Windows writes its boot instructions to this space to insure you boot up normally everytime.

My bet is your BIOS is looking at other media for boot instructions. Go into the BIOS and check under the startup settings. You should have a boot order, make sure HD0 or HD1 is on the list. You want your computer to look at the HD for boot instructions, but it has to go through the bios first. Start there.

G'luck, Cassidy

It was the BIOS.

Thanks,
Sixto
95 S420
91 300SE
87 300SDL
83 300SD