Can't load XP on my HD

Ok, check this out. I just bought a ABIT KV7 motherboard, AMD XP 2900+, Radeon 9250 Vid card and 512Mb DDR Ram. I have a 20Gb Western Digital HDD from a old Gateway system that has Win ME on it. So I put all this together and go through the BIOS to set up my boot to CD-Rom. Now my BIOS see's everything and everything looks good. So I try booting off the CD-ROM with my XP Disc in there. The text says Press any key to Boot of CD-Rom. So I press any key and the screen goes blank. Then you can hear the disc turning in the the CD rom drive and the HDD sounds like its taking in information. This goes on for about 2 minutes and then the Computer shuts itself down with 2 continuous beeps looping after the whole PC has shut down. Do you think this is Hardware or Software problems? I thought it would be the HDD, so I tired a different one and the samething happens. Any thoughts?

Thanks

the Mobo uses the Phoenix bios so looking at that may help..........I cant find any fault with 2 continuous beeps.

Have you tried formating the old HDD to rid it of ME ? and start with a clean install?

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I can't get into Dos to format it, unless there is a different way then I'm thinking of...what do you suggest I do? I can get into safemode VIA ME, but I can't format from there in MS-dos nor just by right clicking the C:/ drive.

Alrighty, I tried to Fdisk my HDD but everytime I select to delete the Partition, it says "could not change Partition, because this disk could not be locked" what ever that means.

I'm gonna try to Boot up in Dos with a Boot disk again.

So I was able to make a boot disk, I formatted the HDD and was trying to install WIN XP Pro. Well, just as I'm About to partition the HDD, the system shuts off and has 2 continuous beeps looping after the whole PC has shut down. I was told to make sure hte RAM was cool and the BIOS still see's it and even if I move the RAM to a different slot, it still see's it. So I still don't think its the RAM. I also was told it could be overheating, but I have a brand new fan on the processor and the systme health check in the BIOS says everything is fine. Any other Ideas?

Have you tried the utilities available from Western Digital?

You will find them here:

http://www.tacktech.com/display.cfm?ttid=287

ahhh, no I haven't I'll give that a try. Good idea!!

In older Phoenix bois 2 continuos beeps in a loop mean't the first 64K RAM chip or data line failure. i.e. A failure of some sort testing the first 1Mb of system memory.

Cure? - Troubleshoot system memory. This might give you a pointer.

Yeah, I thought that as well, but the Porblem is that the Beeping isn't happening during POST, its after the system crashes while trying to Load XP pro...almost at the same spot everytime. Which still leads me to believe its the memory or a short in my ABIT KV7 board. I'm gonna change out the new ram I got with the MOBO with some "known good" DDR this weekend and see if that works, I also am gonna run that HDD utilities as well and see if that helps. Thanks guys!!

*bump*

Well, over the weekend I got my Computer to run. I think it was a combo of things. I put two more sticks of 256Mb of ram into it (which gave me 1Gb) and I also hunted down some thermal compound grease for my Processor to keep it cool. After all that, I had no problems loading XP. I took the other two sticks of ram out and it still works fine. So I think the grease is what did the trick. Chalk one up for the good guys. Thanks again for your help!