M45 recovery issue

I can not figure out this issue. Machine came in with spill damage and will hangs at XP splash screen. It has SystemGuard warranty so the systemboard, keyboard, and hard drive were replaced.

When I try to run the recovery, it boots from the cd, asks you to hit 2 for recovery; F1 for yes; C to continue. The message 'the recovery process is starting' appears and the system shuts down. It boots back up and starts over from the beginning of the recovery process. It will do this as long as you let it.

I swapped the cpu and ram with known good parts and issue remains. The service manager thought it was a DOA systemboard and it was replaced again. Same issue. Run diagnostics on all hardware and all components test good. I manually format the drive and attempt recovery but the same thing happens.

I put in another hard drive from a scrap machine and the recovery starts and runs normally. OK, the hard drive was DOA. Order another hard drive and the same issue reoccurs.

Running out of ideas, I go into the BIOS and notice that the CD rom is set to boot 1st. I set the boot sequence to hard drive first, then cd drive and save the settings. Reboot the machine and the boot sequence is cd rom then hard drive. I tried loading the default settings which sets hard drive as first boot and cd second. Save the settings and reboot and the cd is back to the first boot device.

Here are some specifics of the system. It is a Satellite M45-S3511 running XP. I have flashed the BIOS to the latest 2.0 and updated DMI files.

I do not think the systemboard is the issue as it started the recovery with a spare hard drive. I just do not understand why it will not start with the replacement hard drive. I find it hard to believe that the second hard drive from Toshiba was bad as well.

Any help with this will be greatly appreciated. Thank you all for your time.

Respectfully,

GeoGoGo