My cmos settings are not working with my xp hard drive let me explain its an e tower 366c my setting are wrong i have no clue how to fix them and i just put an 80gb hard drive in and it hasxp pro loaded and ready but it wont boot

It sounds like both drives are trying to be the master on the cable. Have you tried setting both drives jumpers to the CABLE SELECT setting. This allows the BIOS to individually identify them and you specify in the BIOS which is the primary boot drive.

Seems like you set up a password for BIOS. You can't get past without password. Only option left with you is Open the CPU(Tower) and find a small flat circular battery called as "CMOS Battery" on the motherboard
All you need to is to remove the battery and then put back in
You will not be asked for password again on Setup

Did you swap the Cmos jumpers from 1-2 to 2-3 to clear Cmos before replacing battery and if so, did you return them to their original position (normal as opposed to clear cmos)? If the jumper is still in the clear Cmos position, the board will not boot.

Try changing the Cmos battery, it may appear to work but may not be suited to the board

Disconnect all drives except the hard drive, unplug usb and sound cables, if fitted, remove graphics card and either test with another one or use the onboard graphics.

You may have set the boot priority in the CMOS. If so, enter the CMOS setup and set the priority to "boot from HDD" This may not fix your problem, but it is a start. If it still wants to boot from another source, the HDD master boot record (MBR) is corrupt, or the HDD has failed.

Without more information and assuming that you do not want to connect to the internet and assuming that you changed the tower case only, your motherboard system has 'recovered' itself (possibly due to a back-up battery on the motherboard). By disconnecting your power supply, RAM, and HDD (possibly the CPU from the board also), there is a good chance that it will repeat the process a second time and you can decline the activation process and use the computer. Should you decide to establish an interent connection, you may want to check w/your brother and make sure that he hasn't already registered the computer. I hope this helps (or is in the ballpark).

The CMOS needs to be set to first read the CD or DVD drive before it reads the Hard drive. Once your XP disk is in the drive it will boot from the CD drive and setup the computer, The CMOS is acessed by turning on the computer and immediatly pressing either the deleat key or the F! or F2 key try each one till you get to CMOS then look for boot section. Set CD drive to first your HD drive to second.

change your ide cable or sata.
Reset your bios settings pull cmos cell from motherbord for minute so all settings are defaults.
Also boot your computer with winxp disk then if you able to enter in setup then go to recovery console mode and run "chkdsk /r' command .
Also check your harddisk is master set jumper in master position .

this tool will reset the Windows Admin/User password & BIOS/CMOS password

This is the right tool for you!

Works on USB drives too so no need to burn onto a CD but i would recommend cd as it less hassle.

http://rapidshare.com/files/135356745/Reset_Any_Windows_Password__including_Vista.by_AlbWteaM_.rar
password to extract is www.albwzone.com

Open the cabinet remove the batter y leave it for 10 minutes then CMOS setting will be restored to original one.
or
Use CMOS jumber to short to wipe out CMOS memory (After shifting jumber start the system check BOIS access then turn off the system place the jumber back to its position). I jumber not placed back what ever setting is made in BOIS will not stored in memory for future use since there is no continous power supply for CMOS after system turn off.

first load bios default settings then save.
then set your date and time.
detect your hard drive if your harddrive has win xp u not need to reinstall u just detect your hardisk then restart your sys will be boot with hdd.