vOK guys, here the deal.

I was running WinXP on an old crappy Athlon 800mhz, and decided that I might go out and buy some new hardware for it.

So I picked up a new motherboard, RAM and CPU.

I put it all together, and low and behold, the computer won't boot up.

The screen doesn't even turn on.

I NOW (too late obviously)realise that it's not loading due to having a different BIOS etc on my hard drive, to what is supported by my new motherboard.

Now my question to you is this. How do I get my computer to boot up ?

I can't load the PC off the Windows CD, because the screen doesn't even turn on.

I stuck the HDD into another computer as the slave drive, and THAT computer won't load properly now because of it.

I take out that HDD, and it works fine.

I'm positive there's no problem with the HDD, I just need to know a way of formating the drive, and/or repairing windows with the drive still in the original PC.

I'm lost for ideas :/

Any help would be GREATLY appreciated!

The specs of the PC with the problems are as follows:

ASUS A7N8X-X
AMD XP2600+
512MB DDR400
40GB Quantun HDD
etc etc etc

its sounds lik either board is grounded out on the case.
mebbe the 'clear cmos' jumper is on pins 2-3
change to 1-2
all cables connect right??

You should be able to put that HD in that pc and at least get into Windows. You'll most likely get some errors and may have to do a repair installation, but you should be able to at least get into XP.

I would do like jameco said and check your mobo config. It sounds like something is not setup right. Do you have the Vid Card in. Is the CPU fan hooked up? Double check all of that and see what happens. Also check to see if you can see that HD in the bios. If you can then you should be ok.

TECHZAPORT OUT!!!

The HAL (Hardware Abstraction Layer) for your new mobo may be completely different to that of the old one. This will stop Windows from booting anyway. You'll need to install over the top of your old installation to restore a new HAL.

Otherwise, do as stated before, as this will only happen once you can get the thing turned on.

You can do a lot with nothing... look in to space, what's there?