Hi, No, don't try the real mode floppy under XP.
Yes, the drive normally would spin up, sometimes they just don't read anything. If you are sure the cables are correct (if you can use the drive in Windows, they must be) there is something else wrong.
Incompatibiltiy has set in....
You could refresh the boot sector with a bootdisk, but I am not familiar enough with doing that under XP...
In win98, you just boot up with the floppy bootdisk and type sys c: at the A:>
I did mean to look in the BIOS under the IDE hard drives for a CDROM entry, some report only a Secondary Master and it is usually set to AUTO on the right side of that entry, each drive is usually shown as AUTO...in the BIOS, there is another setting
"IDE detection" or similar....that should be "AUTO". Check also for something like Onboard PCI IDE....this enables both Primary and Secondary IDE channels of motherboard.
Some BIOSes have the setting (same place where AUTO shows) that you can change to CDROM....some do not.
problem sounds like XP just will not support the real mode "boot" for your drive. Here is something to support that- from the HP website, if true for their machines, it may be what your problem is::
"attempting to recover a computer that was upgraded to XP
If an HP Pavilion computer that originally came with Windows 98 or Me is upgraded to Windows XP (or 2000), there is a good chance that the computer will no longer accept its original recovery discs. This happens because the file system was changed from FAT32 to NTFS during the upgrade. If this is the case, the recovery program can longer find a valid partition on the hard drive. "
You may have to Delete the NON-DOS partitions and format under FAT32. But, wait till we make sure. It's one way or the other and I am too sleepy to search for the answer right now...either NTFS cant see/read FAT32 or vice versa.
There may be a fix for this- but it would probably be a BIOS flash or update which can be a dangerous problematic thing to do and result in a non-working motherboard very easily. Any branded drive should have a support site::
http://www.memorex.com/service_support/techsupport.php
and a search page for CD discontinuted drives::
http://www.memorex.com/service_support/software_display.php?id=183&dl=p
Might be easier to send them an email----
You need the exact model number.....note that some of the downloadable update files, firmware updates or install disks are not for XP/NT file system....it depends on what you installed FAT32 or NTFS but you would have had to format the hard drive I think to install XP using NTFS, I could be mistaken...if you could check MY Computer, Properties or Properties for Drive C: it should tell you FAT32 or NTFS.