[djk2450]

i am assembling a new system and am having trouble getting xp to load. about 2 years ago, i bought a 3 pack of xp sp2 from vioware. all three were packaged as OEM, unopened and with COA's. i used 2 of the cd's on computers donated to a school; the cd's loading easily and worked just fine. i kept the last one for future use. the future is now, as newegg has some motherboards and cpu's that were the right price and configuration. i have a new seagate 300gb sata hd, 2gb of crucial ram, an amd 4450e cpu and a gigabyte ga-ma74gm-s2 board. all components are listed as compatible by the various manufacturers. when i try to load the xp cd on the hd, it does absolutely nothing. the cd player spins for about 5 seconds, the monitor says to "boot from cd", and the cd stops spinning. i have tried with a hot start and a cold start. i rma'd the first board back and got a second one that does the same thing. i have talked to gigabyte tech support and the setup is ok. he suggested that i call microsoft about the software. i can get the gigabyte driver cd to play but not the xp cd. does microsoft have a time limit on these things? i have tried using 2 other xp cd's from prior installations that i have used to re-install (not the school installs) and nothing from microsoft will play on the cd player or the hd.

ps: i just tried to install ubuntu 7 and it does the same thing. no response from the mobo. it will play the gigabyte recovery cd, but nothing else. please help me, before i use all this stuff as target practice. i have a feeling there is a problem with the mobo bios setup, but am at wits end to find the solution. thank you for any replies. Peace and God bless.

[Mak213]

No there is no time limit on XP SP2. I have used a XP SP1 disc for install not long ago.

There is a problem with the mobo, BIOS or the Optical Drive. Not the CD's. There is no reason for XP and Ubuntu BOTH to be workign this way. There is something wrong with the hardware. Not the software.

[djk2450]

i have tried different hard drives, cd players, flat cables, etc. and i get the feeling it is the motherboard. it does, or doesn't do things, that i have done before. i am fairly new to computing, but some things are fairly simple and obvious. i've built about a dozen units and have not had such serious trouble. i have done some research and found that gigabyte has apparently become a bit lax on QC. i guess they heard i was going to buy one, instead of ECS. thank you for the reply. i do believe i will contact them on monday and ask for an rma.