new hardware and windows XP

[James]

I finished building a new system with a new mother board,
processor, DDR mem, I used my old sound card, DVD, cd
writer, video card, two hard drives.
when I booted up the machine I got a message that said
windows XP failed to start due to a problem such as new
harware or software added. then gives me the option to
start window normally, to a prior working state, safe mode
with promp, safe mode with newtworking, and safe mode. I
tried each of these to no avail. Does any one have a
soulution to this problem?

 

[Tom]

How to do a Repair Install

http://tinyurl.com/1h3r

Tom

 

[Alex Nichol]

I finished building a new system with a new mother board,
processor, DDR mem, I used my old sound card, DVD, cd
writer, video card, two hard drives.
when I booted up the machine I got a message that said
windows XP failed to start due to a problem such as new
harware or software added.

After such changes you need to do a repair reinstall. This will match
the system correctly to the new hardware. Set the BIOS to boot CD
before Hard disk, then boot the XP CD, start Setup (do not take
'Repair' at this stage), then after the license agreement take 'Repair
Installation'. This will retain your existing software installations
and most settings. But Updates will have to be run again, especially
SP1;

It is important to activate the basic XP Firewall before you ever
connect to the net to get the patches, so as to be protected against
things like the BLAST worm.

This should retain your activation status, though if you have never
registered you may have the setup suggest it now (don't bother). You
may nevertheless find you have made so many changes that you need to
activate again by phoning in,