Verifying Pool Data Hang

Ok, I have read all of the other DMI threads and no one had the same issue I am experiencing. Honestly, my issues always seem to baffle people until the problem is finally solved, and then they smack themselves in the head. If we're naming the seven dwarfs of Snow White, then my issue is the 7th one that you can't remember.

Here we go:

Installed Windows XP Media Center 2005 edition to a MSI K8T Neo2 V2.0 mobo on a IBM 40gb hdd. Video Card is a BFG 7600 GS OC, Sound Card is a Creative Audigy 2 ZS, the memory is VData 1gb (2x512mb) dual channel 400Mhz 184-pin DDR, and the CPU is an Ahtlon 64 3500+ socket 939. Two SATA drives present are WD 500gb.

Everything installs fine. Windows boots up properly even after drivers are loaded for all present peripherals, pci, agp, etc stuff. Then I start installing Windows Updates. After I am done with Windows Updates, I get stuck at the Data Pool message. Here comes the kicker...

I can't boot into safe mode, nor can I boot from the Windows OS disk. I am just stuck at the Data Pool message. If I try to boot from the CD-ROM it starts to give the set up files message, then the screen goes black and nothing happens. The only way i got anything to move again is put in a new HDD that is blank. This time it was a 120gb Maxtor. Well, same issue. As soon as I got the windows updates loaded, I can't get past the Data Pool message.

What can I do to make sure HDD #3 doesn't have the same issue other than just not update Windows? I'm not really keen on being stuck with Media Player 9, no .Net Framework, and IE6.

Well, i hope I gave you all the pertinent info you need to try and help access my situation. I appreciate anything you can do to help.


-ps. i have tried resetting the bios to defaults and resetting the CMOS. neither made any difference.