I purchased a used MB on the tray off the web-orig. had bad bulgeing caps. Installed and hooked back up to original HDD. After POST got F! to retry F2 for setup. Setup recognized HDD and other gear. Have run Dell diags of machine and drives. Have attempted to re-install XP with no success Have not been able to get past post. Will run Acronis from CD nut no joy. Is there something simple I have missed or do I declare the new(er) MB bad? trhanks

You cannot change a motherboard in a OEM box (like Dell, HP, etc) and use the operating system software that came with the box, unless you buy the new motherboard from the original manufacturer. The OEM XP operating system software is locked to the motherboard it is initially installed on. You will have to purchase an XP installation CD.

Thanks for the reply. I have an install CD. I have loaded it at least twice. Initially I got "F1 to retry, F12 for setup' on boot. I have used Recovery console to rum MRF and BOOT fix. I now get "Invalid Boot.ini, trying c:\windows, ntdetect failed" The c:\Boot.ini record looks fine ???