Has anyone ever heard of getting the Blue Screen of Death during a clean install of XP? It happens right in the beginning when all of the devices are being installed on the bottom of the screen. Any insight would be appreciated.

Typically (but not always) a BSoD is RAM or a driver... As you say it happens during device installation I suggest you strip out anything not essential - leave just keyboard/rodent/vga; and try again. Also ensure you do have all required drivers. Also ensure the system is OK for XP the XP readiness check (or whatever M$ call it)? You have lot of RAM; presumably more than one stick involved? If so reduce to a single stick (min =128Meg for XP) and see if you can get the install to finish; try each stick in turn..

HARDWARE: 1)Intel Pentium D 940 Presler 800MHz FSB LGA 775 Dual Core Processor 2)Gigabyte GA-G1975X Socket T (LGA 775) Intel 975X ATX Intel Motherboard 3)pqi TURBO 2GB (2 x 1GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 667 (PC2 5400) Unbuffered Dual Channel Kit System Memory 4)550 Watt SurePower ATX Internal Power Supply 5)GeForce 6600 Video Card, PCI Express, 256MB DDR 6)Seagate 300GB Hard Drive 7200RPM, Internal, SATA/150 7)MegaSTOR Triple Format 16x8x16 Internal ATA DL DVD+/-RW Drive What I have done thus far: boots from cd rom installing xp ... makes it to the end of driver check then blue screen of death hard drive was thought to be misfunctional but i slaved it to another computer and it showed up ... i formated, partitioned and installed xp pro on the drive , it was a bit pixelated like the os software didn't install excatly perfect but it was booting windows from that drive... when i put it back in computer in development it said error loading the os .... things to know: there is a digital 2 digit display on the mother board that flashes cl or 00 until the beep that sounds the booting process then it dislays 2 number representing the tempature or speed , i'm not sure .... it sometimes takes a minute or two for it to begin the boot process after power up which is a bit strange to me .... i tried using the other computers drive with xp already installed in the computer in developement to see if it would boot ... it just black screened , restarted and it was an os error .... then i stabbed my eyeball with a fork HAHA just kidding, but I'm sure you know of the aggravation factor ;)

Have you removed the cpu to make sure that you have a smooth even coating of artic silver compound on the cpu and that the heatsink is clean and smooth. If it is a new cpu, make sure the plastic protective covering has beed removed. Check the cpu's cooling fan to make sure it is connected to the correct mobo power pin. Check in the bios what the hardware health temps and fan rpms are.

Well, thanks for the help guys. It ended up being a faulty HDD controller, so now until I can buy an SATA drive I have the HDD & DVD drive on the same ribbon cable. The HDD is master and the DVD is slave. Now I have a new problem! The aforementioned GeForce 6600 Video Card, PCI Express, 256MB DDR is not working. I believe it to be the motherboard again. The board has 2 PCI-E slots and neither of them detect the video card either in the BIOS or Windows. The card is good, because I installed it in another PC and it ran fine. I tried installing the chipset drivers again for the board but to no avail. Am I missing something or is the board just screwed? Thanks.

mmm - thanks for the feedback re HHD controller.... useful one to have for future reference. As regards the vga card... Presuming the card is OK (and you seem to have verified it is) is the board OK for this card; check with web-site for Mobo (and vga) specs etc.? Failing which - perhaps time to change the Mobo - will resolve the controller issue too?