boot problem

I am having an issue when my system boots up in Win XP Pro. If I have the
XP Pro cd inserted it will boot up, recognize cd and then go on to boot off
hard drive. If XP cd not inserted, system will not boot from hard drive. I
have tried using the recovery console with fixmbr, fixboot to no avail and
have even tried re-installing system. This has occurred on two machines I
have bilt from scratch with brand new hard drives. Any clues on how to
approach fixing this issue??

In BIOS is 1st c: 2st a: 3st CDROM

I have Seagate Baracuda 80GB NTFS

I'm assuming that you have done a thorough Google search for this problem and have found nothing.

The steps that you tried are basically the same ones that I would have used. Since you attempted to re-install xp, we can assume that you will be happy if you can get that accomplished.

You need a boot disk. This is the type (a floppy) we had up to win xp. If you do not have this disk, borrow one from a friend with win 98. This link talks about making one. LINK

Boot from a: using the boot disk.
Run fdisk.exe
Delete partition from the hard drive. I am assuming that you have one large partition on the drive. If you have additional partitions, delete them. You will be instructed to exit fdisk and reboot. Now shut down computer.

You are now ready to install xp. Put xp cd in the drive and turn on the computer. If everything works according to plan the xp installation will automatically start from there.

Good luck and welcome to TZ.

Am gonna do it.