IDE HDD Boot Windows install Error

[Stevodoran]

Hi,

 

A few days I got an old desktop from a friend, nothing special about it but it seems pretty decent for its age. It had no operating system on it so I went ahead and tried to install both Windows XP and 7. When I put the CD in and set the first boot option to the CD drive and tried to start it up, but got a strange error. It said BOOTMGR is missing. I tried re-burning multiple CD's but all had the same error.

 

I then tried disconnecting the hard drive and to my amazement the cd booted up with no problem. But then of course I had no HDD to install to so I couldn't install. Once the HDD is reconnected it dosnt show up in the windows installer.

 

For the tl;dr people, the computer gives me a BOOTMGR error when the HDD is connected, but not when its disconnected.

 

The HDD is an IDE Samsung SP0802N.

 

Any help would be largely appreciated.

[godlikegohan]

i always format my hard drives ..  before installing a new os