I just got a new HD - WD 500gb 7200rpm 16mb cache - and a fresh XP Pro SP2 OEM install disk. I'm trying to install XP Pro onto the new HD. I am getting through the first portion of the install, where the HD gets formatted and the files copied. But, after the first reboot, when the XP splash screen comes up, I go to a blue screen. Most times it tells me a file is missing or corrupt almost immediately. Sometimes it will go through the splash screen and then go to a black screen for a minute or so and then blue screen telling me that Windows has prevented a serious error and has shut down. I took out all but one stick of ram and took my hardware down to the absolute basics: I took out my NIC and my USB add-on card, I disabled the mobo onboard Sound functions and disconnected all but one CD drive and the HD I'm installing to. Tried again with the same results. Any ideas? I'm running a Biostar Socket A mobo with a Sempron 2300+ CPU, 1gb DDR, and a GeForce 4000 MX vid card. As I said, the HD is a brand new WD 500gb. When I remove the new HD and put my old HD back in, everything runs great! I am puzzled!

What is the capacity of your old drive? Life is more painless for those who are brainless.

Old drive was 110gb

I once saw a download fix for drives over 136GB. Just exactly what the problem it fixed is I'm not sure. With the old HDD in place try going to the Windows Update page and do a search for the update. I think that's where I found it. You may also want to partition that 500GBs into quite a few logical drives. That may help. Software gives me a headache.