I have an old computer, which has worked well for a long time on XP Home. Recently it stopped booting, freezing on the initial boot screen (where it shows the name of the chipset). I've tried formatting the hard disk and reinstalling XP from my new machine, but this hasn't changed anything. Is there anything I can to to fix it? If not, do I just need to change the motherboard? Or is it easier to get a new machine? Thanks!

if it is freezing before you get to the part, where windows is loading, reinstalling is not likely to make a difference. Also, reinstalling in one machine and transfering the drive to another, is usally not the way to go, this would likely require another repair install. Post back if you can enter the bios setup, probably by hitting the del key or one of the F keys at the right time. larry

I suspected that was the case. When booting, however, it doesn't get as far as the screen to get into BIOS. Does this therefore make it an issue with the BIOS itself?

Sounds like a hardware problem, not a software problem...possibly overheating. When's the last time you opened the case & blew the dust out of it? You most likely wasted your time formatting/reinstalling. Hopefully you have backups of all your important data. If you reinstalled XP onto the drive using your new machine then swapped back into the old one, it most likely won't boot into Windows anyway. You have to install Windows on the machine it's going to be run on. Your problem is happening prior to XP loading so more than likely there was nothing wrong with the old XP installation. You just created a new problem that you're going to have to deal with once you get the system to boot.

I cleaned the computer quite regularly when it worked, and again when I took the HD out. Could it be an issue with the power supply, because I haven't cleaned that?

dissconnect all drives, data & power cables, optical & hard drives. pull all pci cards, pull all sticks of ram, & reinsert one stick in the 1st slot. if you have a graphics card & integrated graphics, pull the card & use the integrated graphics. Make sure the power cable is pulled, while you are doing this. Now try getting to the bios setup. larry