I notice that you have not received a reply to your post to date and, 
although I do not have a direct answer for you, perhaps you can supply 
more information so that a solution can be found.

Does the BIOS properly see the hard drive and the CD drive?

If the hard drive is disconnected, does the boot process end in a 
request to the effect "insert boot disk and press any key"?

When you try the boot CD, have you set the boot order in the BIOS to 
first try the CD before the hard drive?

Is the hard drive set as the "master" and the CD drive set as the 
"slave" (if using only a primary controller slot)? If using both primary 
and secondary controller slots, both drives can be set as "masters" with 
the hard drive connected to the primary controller.

If the foregoing does not help, please post your findings and I or 
others can try to offer further help. Please note that if the hard drive 
was not last used in this computer, Windows may need to "learn" about 
the computer and install appropriate drivers, etc. In essence, it would 
not be a normal start up the first time.

Tom

On 3/20/2010 4:14 PM, Ralph Hunter wrote:
> I have a old dell dimension 4100 and I am trying to install a windows 2000 hard drive, I think i had it in there before. I get the monitor screen and error message"inaccessible boot drive". I tried all the safe mode options and nothing worked. Then I downloaded Windows 2000 Pro boot disc from WinPC onto a cd.  It will not run in the computer when I turn it on with the disc in the d drive.  Am I supposed to type in some command to get the computer to read the D drive? I am also unable to  type anything on the error page that I get.
>                 
>

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