if this is not the right forum i apologize. my problem is that on startup of winxp media ed., i get a message "insert boot disk and press any key." sometimes it will just ask where to boot from, winxp or windows. most of the time the former. i have re-installed winxp 3 times. afterwards it will boot fine and re-start fine, but if completely shut down will cause it to give me the insert boot disk again. i have ran my norton 360 program without any results to the negative. i also did a clean boot that didn't help after a complete shut down. i am ready to shoot this thing. any suggestions to help?

check the power and ribbon cable on the hard drive

i've had allot of replies from allot of good people in many forums, many way too technical for me to understand. the common reply from the people that should know was to check the power supply cord, the ribbon cable, clean motherboard with a can of compressed air, reset cmos and check battery. i did all the above and after 4 weeks of error after error message and re-installing win xp 4 times, all problems have been solved! it was the simple things that worked. the problem wasn't all that sudden, it seemed to evolve. thank you cworks, for your post.