You did not answer the question about whether you were booting from a modern install CD or your old install CD, so I am forced to assume a modern one.
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Originally Posted by
drum159
* First I attached another HD.
If it was another PATA hard drive, it's still liable to be the same PATA-related error.
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* Then I took the suggestion to go to the bios and set to default. (that changed my first bootingdevice priority, so I put that back to cd) but booting from cd still not work...
If you were still booting from PATA drives, it's still liable to be the same PATA-related error.
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* In the meantime I downloaded the netinstall but the same frustrating result when trying to boot it.
If you're still booting from PATA drives, it's still liable to be the same PATA-related error.
The error means it can't find the hard drive and/or cdrom. This is with very few exceptions hard drive controller driver related, and
certainly not a mouse problem.
You probably need to tell the CD to load relevant drivers as I mentioned earlier. See what options the cd has for boot and look for alternate kernels or instructions which tell it to load libata.