Dalo Harkin

You need to either reinstall or repair - not what you want to hear I know :(

Hmmm wonder if the HDD is sticking, is it clicking at all? did you clean the pc lastnight?

Did you change anything lastnight - anything at all - drivers, hardware?

Is the card less than a year old? I only mention it as I have a pc with a 2900XT in and it has HDMI capabilities and you have to disable them or it tries to run with all the other sound devices. If there are no updates on windows then its doubtful their is a newer one.

You should get them through Microsoft update if there are any. are you using an ATI graphics card thats either the 2400, 2600 or 2900 range?

Thats the one you are after

post after you have tried it, and we will do our best to help you :) please let us know either way

What was supplied with the PC - a recovery disk is the same thing it has the operating system on it - or in some more modern cases there is a recovery partition on the HDD itself when you boot the PC are there 2 options normally one saying Recovery Section and the Other saying XP Home edition or to that effect.

It sounds like the install didnt complete - please try running it again and keep an eye on whats happening and post back if you get any blue screens or not - you need to go into the BIOS and set the first boot device to CDROM, when it goes through the motions of loading windows it reboots a few times - just leave it all until you get to the options of setting the Networks and personal preferences - once thats done it will load the desktop. When this is all done when you turn the PC off or restart you need to make sure that you switch the Primary boot device back to HDD

So you have reinstalled the OS? - you will need to set the HDD as the PRIMARY BOOT DEVICE - if the CD is the primary then it loops - if the disk is still in - you have taken the XP disk out?

If the BIOS had been updated - AUTO to a BIOS is setting the clock speed, multiplier and all the voltages and the settings for the RAM including the timings and voltage and the devider between the CPU and RAM - if its set to AUTO it also controls the Northbridge and the Southbridge - (controlling the GPU, RAM) It could be anything that has interrupted the MOBO settings - loose jumper is normally the culprit - I swap all mine out for ones on the back of CD/DVD rom ones as they are a much tighter fit ;) Once spent about 2 hours trying to find while the MOBO was losing settings at every restart - thats the cause of me having no hair :rolleyes:

I have no experience of buying PC's readymade - have a look at people like EBUYER and just have a scan around the net for cheapest prices. If you are lookig at spending £400 you will not get a PC that can play games at 1280x1024 with everything set to full.

If the MOBO overclocks as standard which we said :D then chances are that the controller for the memory and GPU was clocking too high for the Memory. Glad it's all sorted ;)

Glad it sorted - for future reference for everyone - if you have a recent Intel CPU - you only need as much TIM as a grain of rice and then use some cling film over your finger to spread it out and then attach the HSF ;)

can you answer who built the pc? I only have SATA HDD's and have had for over 5 years. never had a problem with them and Vista not once.

As this is a relatively new build - who built the PC? can you take a pic of the inside of the PC and post it please.

Is the HDD NEW?? if it is then I doubt there will be any errors

It should give you you the option to format the drive. If it's freezing its HARDWARE no doubt. have you tried popping the CMOS battery out and turning the PC off for 30 secs and then reinserting the battery and starting.

Is the first boot device definately CD ROM

have you tried just one stick of RAM?

Ok - go into the BIOS and check that the order of the HDD's are as follows You need the NEW HDD to be at the top of the list and the OLD HDD below it The HDD options are in there someehere - sounds like the old HDD is still at the top of the list and it's trying to boot that one.

seeing as though the MOBO is a 1333Mhz its fairly new - have you had to change anything in the BIOS or is it all running at stock speeds? some motherboards automatically overclock the CPU and RAM PSU is Powersupply - wanted to know if it was 400watt 600watt etc GPU is Graphic Processing Unit/Graphics card Nvidea 8800GT for eg.

Have you made sure that you have set the first boot device to CDROM And I would change the BOOT ORDER of the HDD's so that the new one is at the top of the list.

Can you please list the whole spec of the PC including PSU wattage CPU socket and speed MOBO GPU

The CPU is held in place by a seperate clip - you do not have to take the CPU out when the Heatsink is removed ;)