New Build Help

So I just built a new machine and am having some issues. It starts to boot fine but then all of a sudden will reboot itself (before I get to the scrolling windows loading screen) and will bring up the screen with the options to start in safe mode etc. No matter what option I choose the same thing happens. I am using a hard drive with windows xp that works on another machine and the following ram/cpu/board. I tried new ram and still get the same problem.

OCZ Gold 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800 (PC2 6400) Dual Channel Kit Desktop Memory Model OCZ2G8004GK - Retail48354385 (N82E16820227199)
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820227199

AMD Phenom II X3 720 2.8GHz Socket AM3 95W Triple-Core Black Processor Model HDZ720WFGIBOX - Retail48207752 (N82E16819103649)
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813138130

G.SKILL 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 1066 (PC2 8500) Dual Channel Kit Desktop Memory Model F2-8500CL5D-4GBPK - Retail48207752 (N82E16820231166)
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813138130

Any ideas or help would be appreciated, thanks in advance.

 

Therein lies your problem ...

Unless the motherboard is the same type/model or VERY similar, all you'll get is a reboot loop because Windows tries to load the wrong drivers for the current hardware.

 

Ahhhhh I'm so dumb. Thanks for the quick reply. I just realized that I've never built a machine without a new hard drive so I've never ran into the problem. Any easy way to use that hard drive without re-formatting it?

 

Perhaps, if the original PC is still available.

There are legal issues around using many versions of Windows on machines that they aren't licensed to run on though, and this forum has very strict policies.