The way i fixed this prob was to change bios's on my chip. I found that some of the new ones have a prob with the first dvd check. I used the old evoX bios and it did the check and booted form the dvd without checking the hdd. then use whatever you want to fix it, my advice is just put a cut-down version of evoX then ftp in replace dash and your off!!!
(ps for thos interested, don't try to do a hdd swap using the christmas bios, if you do you'll know why!!)