Help with my first home-built computer

Hi,

I built my first computer yesterday.  Everything seemed to be going well.  It boots, the fans spin, I can access the BIOS menus.  It can see all my devices.  I jammed the Windows XP disk in to get this party started and waited forty minutes for it to format the hard drive.  After that, the computer restarted itself... and never stopped.  It just kept rebooting in circles with no sign of anything having to do with Windows.  It refuses to boot from any Maxtor CD to format the drive.  The computer beeps once when I start it. 

I've tried the drive with and without the jumper, removed unnecessary components, tinkered with the boot order, and switched the RAM's slots.  I'm "installing" Windows for the third time right now.

I have a Core 2 Quad, 8800GTS, 2x2GB OCZ RAM, 200 GB SATA drive, SATA DVD burner, and a Gigabyte "GA-P35-DS3R" board.


Thanks for any help you can offer

Windows XP, lol.

I have Vista, would you rather I install that?

When setting up Windows for the fourth time, it recognized that there was already a Windows folder on the drive.  I said to overwrite it.  When it was ready to restart, it said setup would continue when it was restarted.  Instead, it just went back to the original boot menu from the disc.

Just adding anything that might help you guys help me :(

>>3
Those aren't your only options, faggot.

www.ubuntu.com

www.opera.com

try unplugging everything - RAM, graphics card, LAN card then replug.

might work

>>7
redcream look at this please
Michio Kaku On Aliens, On Physics ...
http://youtube.com/watch?v=uWW6_LfiJJk
http://youtube.com/watch?v=PW8rgKLPHMg

>no sign of anything having to do with Windows

So you're saying the computer reboots before it even reaches the boot loader on the hard drive? If so, your computer is fucked.

I just tried using an IDE drive instead of the SATA one.  No luck.

I've tried the recovery console, but I have no luck.  Even though the installer finds a Windows folder, the recovery console can not find an installation of Windows.

>>9
Windows isn't even able to finish installing, so there's nothing for it to boot anyway, if I understand your question.

>>10
Sorry, correction: The recovery console identified an installation of Windows on both the SATA and IDE drives (not both at once) and will let me enter commands.  However, when entering something like bootcfg as suggested by the Microsoft support page, it refuses to go any further.  The result is still the same: No help from Recovery Console.

I would recommend getting a live Linux CD like:
http://www.tux.org/pub/people/kent-robotti/looplinux/rip/
or
http://www.sysresccd.org/
or whatever is more comfortable for you

If you can boot from it, try to figure out what's wrong with the drive.

Are you using a hacked version of windows?  Is it a good disk?

I took it to Micro Center, the guy was able to format and use it just fine.  When I tried installing again this morning, it worked fine.  Thanks to the people who actually tried to help.

Sage for great justice.