These posts are not just for abright52. Posts are for all who also
have same problem. A little over half of those steps were already
performed by abright52. But others were not executed - such as Disk
Manager and contents of Boot.ini . There is no hardware problem. So
the list of steps after a successful disk diagnostic is now shorter.

Bios program loads a boot program from hard drive's first sector.
This program then loads NTLDR, NTDETECT.COM, and BOOT.INI on root
directly of that active partition. So either program on boot sector is
defective, or those root directory files are missing, defective, etc,
or data in BOOT.INI is wrong, or a CMOS parameter problem (not
previously mentioned) exists. Of course others in the same situation
would start with Recovery Console to fix these problems. Curious that
Recovery Console did not do same on your WD disk. Disk Manager does
fix some things including confirm that partition is active. And then
additional suggestions are below.

If FDISK wrote to the WD disk, then boot sector will be contaminated;
must be overwritten.

Another problem previously not mentioned is using wrong disk
parameters in CMOS. CMOS parameters are only used during boot. Forgot
the different names. However some may partially read the drive
correctly and therefore not see every file. Meanwhile, booting from
CD-Rom would correct that BIOS setting and read all files properly.
Therefore a wrongly loaded CMOS parameter would only cause problems
when booting from hard disk.

Notice how many earlier tests (such as reading disk using DOS) are
made unnecessary and no longer mentioned if using manufacturer's
diagnostic. Diagnostic does not say CMOS parameters are correct, nor
say that boot sector program and those root directory files are proper.
Diagnostic does not even verify that BOOT.INI is correct. We only
know that disk hardware is OK.

What you have already done is listed not for you. What you have
already done was listed so that all others will learn from this
experience - those steps (unlike swapping a CPU) are useful. Also
listed are other tasks you do not say were done (ie Disk Manager and
Boot.ini contents). Listed was a voltage measurements on yellow and
red wire - whether you did it or not - because it identifies another
reason for this type of failure.

Above is a checklist of what should have been done now that disk
drive passes WD diagnostics. In some cases, tasks from that
'checklist' may need be repeated.

wrote:
I ignored your first post because 95% of that stuff had been covered
previously.

I have used the recovery console, I have used FDISK, I have replaced
the PS.
fixboot, bootcfg, and fixmbr have been done. The partition is active.

Please read through the other posts.......it sucks to repeat the same
things over and over.

It does not get to the point that I can go step-by-step unless a
bootable CD is in the drive, and when that is the case it boots without
problems, so that would be pointless.