Computer keeps rebooting, never starts up!

A friend of mine just built a new PC with a Gigabyte mobo and a P4 3ghz H/T. He's using the hard drive from his old computer, which he just transferred from his old PC in its current state. When he tried to boot up he says that it gets all the way to the "Starting Windows XP" screen, then it just reboots and continues forever. The hard drive is 80GB from a Sony PCVRX650 system. He also transferred 2 256MB DDR 2100 modules over to the new PC plus he bought 2 more 512MB Module for a total of 1.5GB of RAM. The only thing I could think of was that there was a proprietary issue with Sony products which may only be able to run on Sony PC's, but I'm not sure. I figure if he formats the hard drive that it may work, but I'd rather avoid that if possible. Any help would be greatly appreciated, thank you!

 

Because of the hardware differences between the two mobos, he needs to perform a repair reinstall of XP. See 'method 2' here:

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;315341

 

When you build a new PC just moving your old HD never works, you almost always have to do a fresh install of the OS. What you can do tho is if you have another drive of some sort before you do the rebuild you can mirror your old drive so you can save your old info.

 

Also tell him that depending on the speed of the 512Mb modules, he may just want to remove the 2 256Mb ones. They could potentially be bottlenecking his system big time since the processor has an 800Mhz FSB. (unless it's actually 3.06Ghz)

 

I should have added in my earlier post that the reinstall procedure at that MSKB link will retain files and settings. But as Jayson pointed out, having a backup of the drive is always a good idea just in case.

 

It's not so bad with Windows 2000 if you do a bit of work beforehand. The last time you shut the system down the last time, just boot into Safe Mode and delete everything (and I mean everything) from Device Manager. As long as you plug the HDD into the same IDE channel as the same master/slave setting, it should boot fine. This works pretty well for Win9x, too, but isn't as necessary.

Windows XP, OTOH, is more annoying. I've never tried the above method with XP because of activation issues.

 

as chicken man said , but not always it works ...
as suggested TRY ,

Failing that, a reinstall is tha only answer [ better anyway] as tha OS will detect correct parameters and settings on Motherboard.....

 

Thank you very much for all of the advice. I told my friend it would be better off if we just format the hard drive and start fresh, but I have another question. Would he be able to use his Sony restore CD which has Windows XP on it or does he have to buy a standalone copy of Windows XP? I know there may be some product activation issues so I was just wondering what would be our best option. Any help would be greatly appreciated, thank you.