The solution for an nforce chipset mother board is the following config & settings:

IDE Optical drive, set to Master
Sata HD
while booting, keep punching the f8 key, once you have chosen the optical drive, continue punching f8 till you are asked to enter some command & continue (best hint that you are on the right screen is it'll suggest to type -v & continue.)

On this screen, type the command in the next line & hit enter, you are ready to Roll!
-x -v cpus=1