i have a maxtor sata 2 harddrive and a asus a8n-sli-se motherboard and all i keep getting is boot disk error but i can install windows on it . i have changed sata cable tryed different slots on board still no joy any body any ideas please.

Sounds similar to a problem I had.

Have you got another IDE hard drive installed?
When I first set mine up with an SATA drive, the PC always defaulted to trying to boot from the IDE drive I had installed.

Going into the BIOS and setting first boot device as SCSI (didn't have SATA option) cured mine.

Hope this helps :hihi:

Don't you need the SATA driver on a floppy before Windows will install?

I have a similar ASUS board the A8N SLI Deluxe, does yours have two on-board raid controllers? If so check which raid controller you are using and that the right drivers are being loaded. As already mentioned check the bios settings, I think there are a number of different options for raid controller booting.

Maxtor HDD's are well known where I work for failing.

I don't really understand - are you getting the boot disk error but then it carries on fine? Is it just that it's trying to boot off something which fails, then it tries the next one in the list which is your working drive? If so, you need to edit the boot sequence in the bios - it might well be something to do with ide/sata as already mentioned (or it might be trying for a floppy or cd drive?).