Drive 0 normally the main drive,, C drive for a normal windows install. drive 1 would be D, 2 E, etc but you can assign diff letters and CD/DVD maybe already fixed on one letter .. tuff call for someone to tell you which drive number is which drive letter without knowing your computer.

You didnt forget to plug in the power cable or have drive cable unplugged from main board. Lots of possible oops.

At this point I think the best option is to unplug the second internal drive and any external drives to see if Windows will boot normally.

I am scared to even say this but is it possible you reformatted the wrong drive?

Raven - I know I didn't reformat the hard drive. The reformat happened on Monday (although i didn't realize it had succeeded until later that night). I used the computer with no trouble yesterday - so my programs were working from the C: drive yestserday.

This morning -after leaving it with the dos prompt yesterda, it said no boot device available - it had found the drive on sata 0, sata1, sata4. I will try removing the other drives later. i can also try looking for the boot cd - but it still concerns me that it's not finding the programs on the main drive (I do think that's sata0). It did all of yesterday
Lynn.

You note that you see the flashing cursor. Is there anything before the cursor on the same line? C: perhaps?

If so then type dir and hit the Enter button to view the directory.
If there is no C: then type C:\ and hit Enter, if the C drive appears then type dir as noted above.
Repeat this but use D: then E: to see if you can enter any drive on the computer.

If none of the above achieves anything go here and download the Windows 98 start up disk file. If your computer still has an A drive copy that to a floppy disk, if not A drive burn to a CD. Insert either and fire up the computer.

Now you will have a DOS screen showing the A: prompt if a floppy was used, a different number if a CD.

Type cd C: hit Enter
Type dir hit Enter and the contents of the drive will scroll up the screen.
Repeat this part using D: E: and even F: to verify what drives are on what letters.

Whew! I took out the replacement second internal hard drive (and the external hard drive). Rebooted - everything booted up fine.

Then I shut down. Reattached the external drive - booted up - everything's fine.

So does it seem that the replacement drive from WD is bad as well? (I did not put the 2TB drive back in - but it was working fine before. Again - this drive was bought for when I get around to setting up a dual boot XP/Windows 7 drive - and until my family crisis - and multiple electronic/tech failures are resolved, I'm not going to tackle that one.)

Don't know why it wouldn't boot from the original hard drive when the replacement second drive was installed. Any thoughts? since it does boot with the bad drive - although it mentions the hard drive problem and allows me to select F1 to continue.

At least I'm up and running - and the main, original drive seems fine. (I have used Acronis - and did a back up and incremental over the summer. Then did a full clone in December when I thought the drive was failing. But I am still quite confused by the acronis instructions - and would like to start from scratch. Now I have a 2TB external drive and would like to make the proper kind of back up. How should I do this - as the words on some of instructions Raven often links use clone at one point but seem to be talking about a different kind of back up. One complication is that the original thread for acronis 2010 - with pics - is gone now and acronis 2011 instructions are more fleshed out). I have Acronis 2010.

Thank you.
Lynn.

It is entirely possible that you never had the 80 wire ribbon cable properly attached. With modern hard drives it is virtually impossible to attach the ribbon cable wrong but your's may not have been fully seated on the motherboard or the drive.

Good point!

But If it's a sata drive though there is no ribbon cable. But your right a connection problem could still have existed.