Okay,
Earlier this year I bought a P4P800-E mobo w/ a 2.8Ghz Intel and 1 stick of Mushkin 512MB RAM from Bok. I finally have gotten around to building this computer up (giving it to my brothers' for x-mas + having it do DC projects).
All the parts are in it and everything started up just fine. I put in a legal copy of a Windows XP SP2 install and everything was going pretty good. The problem arose when it came time to restart so the "real" installation could begin.
The Windows XP startup screen came up and those 3 little blue blocks that fly across the screen like a "progress" bar only went across 3 times then it froze as it started to go again the fourth time.
From there Windows never loaded. The screen just stayed there. It stayed there for over an HOUR once. I need to get this thing built ASAP (before X-mas). If anyone has any ideas then please start throwing them at me. I've tried a LOT of things (removing the 2nd stick of matching RAM I bought, etc etc).
If anyone would really wanna be able to help me super-fast and thinks they might know the problem then you can PM me and I'll reply with my Phone # so I can put you on speaker phone and work on the computer at the same time.
Thanks,
-Jeff
P.S. One other thing I noticed is that when the computer is just sitting in the BIOS screen the processor is running at 40-50 degrees Celcius. My Dual Xeon rig runs ~50C @ full load, and this thing is just sitting idle. I went out and bought a brand new HS&F and I wiped the old thermal paste clean off and replaced it with brand new Arctic Silver 5 thermal compound. It is STILL running at 40-45C. I'm thinking it might be an overheating issue locking it up when the computer is put to any sort of task. I'm not sure why it's overheating though because everything is tight and there's the correct amount of thermal paste on the proc.