New Computer, please help!

This was my first time building a new computer and everything seems to have worked out properly. The only problem I have so far is when I start the computer. It loads the initial screen where it say "Asus P4P800 Motherboard" and "Press DEL to go to setup" something along those lines. Then it loads this screen where it says "Press TAB key to User Windows!" and below it it says "Detecting Devices..." and such. When it's done "detecting" the devices it says:

Primary Master: No Device
Primary Slave: No Device
Secondary Master: No Device
Secondary Slave: No Device

I felt kind of awkward at this point because the hard drive was infact plugged in and the ribbon was connected.

Then it goes to this screen where I have the options like "Last known good configuration" and "Start Windows Normally" and those options. Then once I choose one such as Start Windows Normally it reboots and the same thing happens all over again. This is as far as I can get. If you could help with this problem it would be appreciated. Thanks!!!!

Hmm. First of all, double check that the HDD is going the the CORRECT IDE, and also that the jumper settings are set correctly.

If this still doesn't fix anything, you will have to mess around w/ BIOS etc.. but check those things first.

Wait... you have windows on already? Or are you just booting from disk?

Well, I built a new computer and put a hard drive with Windows XP and all my files already in it into the computer instead of buying a totally new HD.

Yeah, I checked and its going into Primary IDE and the jumper settings are set to Primary.

Ok first off Windows XP won't like a total hardware change, when you install it it detects all kins of things like your motherboard and other components, when you sudently change it, well it will get crank
For your probelsm sounds like one of a couple of things
First it might be a bad IDE ribbon cable
second could not have power to the drivers
third could be that as stated before you havn't pushed the ribbon cable in the right way.

Oh ic, so does that mean I need to get a totally new hard drive or format this one since Windows XP doesn't like it?

I know the IDE cable is working properly cause the BIOS can see the harddrive and shows that the hard drive has a 80 GB limit and such. I checked and all the power cables were plugged in.

As for not connecting the ribbons the right way, I checked and reconnected them. I guess I couldn't really have plugged them in the wrong way in the first place because one pin is removed so I don't connect it the wrong way.

heres the scoop
First have you set it up in your bios for that hard drive to be a bootable device.
should be under Boot Squence or soemthing of thatsort
Second if it still wont boot too windows and you wish to keep your data, i'd sugest you get a HDD plug it in as master
install new copy of windows on it set up
then shut down add second hdd as a slave drive and then copy everything you want too new one/ backup to cd which ever is easier for you
then format old on and install windows on it <unless you plan to keep using other hdd i nthat case just format and you have a nice HDD space >

Yeah, that is surely the problem. Changing hardware on XP is a big no no like Iamien says. You can just buy a cheapo 10 gig HDD to stick windows on, then continue to use your old one.

oooh, ok cool. My current harddrive runs at 7200RPM or whatever it is. If I get a slower one, would it make my faster harddrive run slower?

Yes and no

Yes
if you have OS on slower drive, your OS accessing drive takes longer, slowing down your entire system. You other drive will stil access data at the same speed but the whole system runs slower.
I';d suggest. if you are getting a slower drive, Install Os on slower on, copy what you want to keep onto newer on, after that format fast/older one, set it to yoru primary drive, load OS onto that and copy files onto it, format other and then use other as a secondary drive.
Personaly, i fidn the cost diferencee bwteen a 5400 and a 7200 drive minimal for the reciveed reward, makign it worht it just to splurge o nthe bigger one

Ok ic, well there is another problem goin on now.

I formatted the HD but i have another problem now. When I start up the computer with my Win98 boot disk inside theres is something wrong. This is what i did so far: I formatted the HD on the comuter it used to be on. I removed it and plopped it into my new computer. Now, I tried booting it up with a boot disk and while it was booting up this appeared: It said all this stuff like "Driver provided by blah" and "Device Name:" but the thing that bothered me was "No drives found, aborting installation". When i put the HD back into the other computer it acted normal and the "No drives found" thing didn't happen.

Also, when I tried going to my "e:" while my computer was running with the boot disk (I think its called DOS, right?) it said that "e:" could not be found, but there was indeed a CD-ROM drive and a CD-ROM (WinXP) inside it.

I have absolutely no clue whats going on. Thanks soo much to the people that already replied and helped me. If anyone could help me now with this problem, it would be appreciated. Thanks again.

if you have a winxp disk why not just boot off it?

ok some disks are bootable
Xp home
use this

Xp Pro
This

Did you format the drive into Fat32 or NTFS?

Im not entirely sure. I was just there and I typed "format c:".

ok
i think you'll need to do this.
First go into your bios <when you firts boot up you should see a message "hit x to go into setup> hit what ever button x is .
Now change your boot otrder so that your booting off your cd rom first.
That should bring you into Windows Xp install
This will let you reformat PC properly into NTFS Follow on screen instructions to get it to install

IF you Cd is not bootable, i can help you make a bootable one using the current CD a Cd burner a file i have and nero

I don't think my CD is bootable because when I try to boot from it it says "Missing Operation System".

ok
first try doing it like this

Use the links i mentioned 4 posts up, use them to create a set of 6 floppys to start you machien with.