XP Pro install problems

[BIGO]

Having trouble installing XP Pro on one of my machines:
ABIT VA6; PIII-750; 512 Crucial (Micron) RAM; 38 GB HDD; ATI Radeon 7000; HDD is by itself on IDE 0; IDE 1 has dvd drive and Benq CD-RW drive.

Have formatted drive to NTFS (2 Times) with install CD; all files seem to load ok, and goes to reboot. Starts OK with Windows XP Pro screen; The first time it gets to the light blue screen with the bullets and "Loading files;"

Then the computer goes to re-start; it goes through bios checks, to "Windows Setup is restarting..." then reboots again...over and over again.

(Note: This happened also before with some other memory that I suspected may have been incompatible (16 chips on 2 and 8 chips on the third) which led me to install new ram...same problem)

This machine ran Windows 98SE just fine.

Please help!

[Sterling_Aug]

Are you using the latest BIOS?

Unplug everything except the HDD and 1 CDROM. Swap CD drives if it still fails.

[gtaylor]

Check all the hardware is on the Windows XP HCL (Hardware Compatibility List) first. This is quite important for installing on older machines.

[BIGO]

Thanks for the help, all.

BIOS was upgraded (latest ver. was in 2002), and I tried one CD, both as slave and separately on second IDE port. same issue.

No extras ( like modems, etc.) were installed which could have caused problems.

I believe there is a problem with the mobo itself. Since it is relatively old, I think I'll just get a newer one. Although I hate to give up on this, a newer mobo for a spare DURON that I have shouldn't cost too much.

BTW...where can I find the XP HCL? Thanks for that input.

[cheeseman]

maybe the ram could be going, that does make windows xp go cranky:D

[gtaylor]

http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/hcl/default.mspx?gssnb=1 will do it matey.

[BIGO]

Re Cheeseman comment: Yea, I've been through the mill on memory issues in the past...this memory is brand new and "matched" from Crucial.

Thanks gtaylor for the M$ site.

Like I say, I think I'll just move up to a newer board. Any comments on Soyo SY-K7ADA, or ABIT KXT-133 (both claim to be XP compatible)?

[gtaylor]

With motherboards, I generally go for whatever I need/can afford in a gigabyte one. If not that then Asus. Just my opinion, and others will undoubtedly present their's.