Need help quick Comp wont boot

[Sejira]

I need help, my computer won't boot properly.
When I start the computer it loads everything fine, but when it gets to booting from the Hard Drive something goes wrong.

When the "Microsoft Windows XP" loading windows shows, it instantly flashes the blue screen and then starts up again straight away, I don't have time to see what the blue screen says. Also when I power it up a medium length beep sounds, I can't seem find what the beep means in the Motherboards user manual or anything. When I power down 3 short beeps sound(I think it's 3 but it may have been 2).

Could this be a problem with the CPU? It took me a few tries to put its fan on properly. It wasn't anything to do with the video card because I took that out and used the integrated VGA on the motherboard and the same thing happened.
Might it be the Hard Drive? I used 2 different hard drives and the same thing happens, they are both ones that use the IDE connection cable. Those 2 hard drives are a bit old but I don't see what might go wrong with it. I tried the one I bought, a SATAII hard drive, it gets to finishing loading all components and then says, nothing to boot please insert cd, or something like that.

The thing is I need to boot from my older Hard drive so I can burn a Windows to CD to make sure the new hard drive and everything will work fine.

Please can anyone help?

Here's my specs:
AMD Athlon 64 3700+ 2.2GHz 1mb L2 Cache
Foxconn 6150K8MD-8EKRSH Motherboard
1024MB Ram DDR400 PC3200 (In DIMM1 and DIMM3)
XFX GeForce 7300GS 512MB
320GB Western Digital SATAII Hard Drive(This is the one I need to Install Windows on)
Currently using a 20gb Maxtor Hard Drive (Using the IDE connection)

Here are the items:

CPU
http://www.komplett.co.uk/k/ki.asp?s...D-E46501023430

MotherBoard
http://www.microdirect.co.uk/Product...6&GroupID=1091

RAM
http://www.microdirect.co.uk/Product...7&GroupID=1705

Graphic Card
http://www.microdirect.co.uk/Product...2&GroupID=1264

HDD
http://www.microdirect.co.uk/Product...6&GroupID=1055

Case
http://www.microdirect.co.uk/Product...7&GroupID=1401

[SlothX311]

if you are using 2 sticks of memory try booting with just one, then if that doesnt fix it you could try moving around the stick of memory to test for a bad memory bank...

another possibility is a conflict with I/O devices, do you have any cards or anything installed that is not needed to boot (other than video card)... a modem could cause this problem, or sum other I/O device like a tv tuner card, etc...

you could also try re-installing a using a different disk or OS, to test for a bad install

another silly possibility is that you may not have your boot settings set correctly, enter your system bios and disable any additional ports or features that are not needed, for instance.... 128MB of video memory allocated, if you not even using the on-board video



^basically just try stripping this bad boy down to the bare minimum hardware and settings needed to run, and then once you have a stable environment introduce all of the accessories to the pc.... is there anything more you can tell me?

[Sejira]

If I know what the Blue screen says maybe Ill know what the problem is. Is there a way to stop the computer rebooting at that point so that I can read it?

Also Im gonna try changing the BIOS because I read someplaces to stop BIOS memory Caching and SHadowing, since Im at a library using their comp I cant do stuff straight away

Ive tried starting it in Safe mode, still doesnt work. My cd drive doesnt seem to be working as well(its not a new one so im not sure if thats the problem).

Ill reply as soon as I know more.

[BeastMaster]

I would try the suggestion above. Start with memory. Try one stick at a time.