I just finished building my first PC, and Windows XP will only boot in safe mode. Here's what's been going on: The hard drive in this machine is one I pulled from the PC I used before. The thing that surprised me is that I did not need to reinstall Windows after I transferred the hard drive. The only hardware that isn't new is the RAM, and I expected to have to reformat. Now when I turn on the PC, it starts booting, and the screen with the Windows XP logo will come and go. However, immediately after this screen disappears, a blue screen with text on it briefly appears, and vanishes before anything can be read. The computer restarts and its booting process begins again. This time, it gives me the prompt to start in safe mode, safe with networking, normal mode, etc. The computer works fine in Safe Mode, but obviously this isn't ideal for a gaming setup, so I've shut it down till I can get this fixed. Does anyone have any ideas as to what might be going on? Here's a list of my key components, let me know if you need any more info. Windows XP sp2 AMD Athlon 64 3200+ eVGA 133-K8-NF41-XX motherboard -not sure of hard drive brand, but it's 250GB 512 DDR PC3200 RAM (I do have another 512 stick that isn't installed at the moment)

Oh, duh... forgot the video card. eVGA GeForce 7800 GT

Try this. How to do a system repair.--Boot from the xp cd and go past the recovery console to the install menu. Select repair the existing installation. You won't lose any data except the xp updates. Unless you have a slipstream sp1 Or SP2 cd you will have to d/l sp1 or sp2 and all subsequent updates. You MUST have at least SP1 installed and the updates for security reasons. Be sure the firewall and A/V is active before going online as you will be susceptible to sasser and msblaster. http://computervitals.com/

Do not do a repair install !!!. The system only loading safemode is a sign of a video driver problem, from safemode do the following. 0. Completely uninstall your all/prior video drivers. 1. Disable all startup items. Once that is done reboot and you should be able to load windows normally, you can them reinstall your eVGA 7800GT drivers and also enable only needed startup items (MSCONFIG). Leadtek sucks BIG TIME

Thank you for both suggestions! I am sorry to say the video driver suggestion did not work. It was a good guess, considering my previous video card was an ATI, and the new one an nVidia, but that wasn't the problem. I'm in the middle of a recovery install right now, I'll post again once I have the results.

The thing to have done was to reboot and try to pause the bsod error message so that you could tell exactly what it wa that was wrong. My bet is that as everything is new and the xp was old then there was a corruption within the system DLL and Driver files plus a security lock from XP to keep you from doing just exactly what you did. I don't know what it was that your intentionally started out to do but it should have been a complete reinstall to begin with with the new parts so as to have a clean system. IN THE MATTERS OF STYLE, swim with the current; in matters of principle, STAND LIKE A ROCK Visit Computer Vitals For A Pleasant Surprise

Unfortunately the Repair Install did nothing to help, either. Will I have to do a clean install? I've backed up what needs to be backed up. Also, if it makes a difference, my original computer (the one this hard drive is from) was a Compaq pre-built system, and I'm sure the Windows that came with it was designed to be fitted to that hardware. Is that possibly what's impairing this new pc?