Need as much help as possible, please!!!

[optinox]

I'm going to explain this from start to finish so that anyone who replies (thank you for your time and support) will be able to maybe better trouble shoot the problem.

I built my 1st PC, DFI Lan party Nforce4 Ultra D mobo, athlon xp 64 3000 venice core, saphire ati radeon x300se pci express vid card, hynix dual channel memory (2 x 256mb ram pc 3200), 80gb hd.

What I did and was told was wrong was I put in the 80gb hd into my current pc (the one I'm using at this very moment) and loaded win xp corp sp2 onto, the installation went great, I was able to boot up on the new hd and use win xp corp sp2, I removed the hd and installed it into my new pc after I was done putting the pc together, I learned from others on here that was my first mistake.

So, I tried installing win xp corp sp2 all over again once the new pc was together, well it got to the blue screen that says in the top left hand corner 'windows setup', then it scans and installs the drivers, and all that other stuff....2 things happen after it finishes that part, either I get a blue screen with an error that says 'Bad_pool_header' and something about checking hardware ect, or it'll just come up with blank blue screen...

So I used a win 98 boot disk, and formatted the drive, nothing is on the drive cause it's formatted, so then I created a new dos partition, ect, that goes well and then I try and installing win xp corp sp2 again, same thing happens.

When I go into CMOS or system set up, the HD is detected, it says it's the master drive, has the volume number and the size (80gb), my memory is also displayed and it says 524288 Kb of memory...so basically I feel I'm screwed and have no idea on what to do, I mean I just don't understand why win xp corp sp2 installed perfectly in my current pc but in this new system it's not going well at all. I'm pretty sure all the hardware is connected properly, I can't even run Linux Knopix and that's suppose to boot right from the CD rom drive.

I'm not sure if this would have any affect on anything, but I'm putting a pic of what the mobo looks like, you'll notice that the memory slots go yellow, orange, yellow, orange, well I have my 2 sticks of 256mb ram on the top 2 (yellow, and orange)....memory is detected so I don't think that is the problem.

Now the quick installation guide I got with the mobo said to put the PCI express in PCI express 1 slot, well I put it in PCI express 2 slot because the the PCI express slot was close to the Nforce 4 fan, I just didn't want it to be too cluttered so I decided to put it there instead...there's display on my monitor (mobo starting up, accessing CMOS, ect...so I'd assume that where the vid card is placed isn't affecting it, cause if the video card was in the wrong place wouldn't I just see a blank/black screen?

At this point I'm just frustrated, I was so excited to do my 1st build and about the parts I got, and now I'm just really bummed out cause I don't know what to do, I almost feel like I wasted my money, I just need some advice/help...I even tried installing the Utility CD that came with the mobo but that doesn't seem to boot, I dunno, hopefully some of you's that know lots can help.

**I took the video card out of PCI express slot 2 and put it in PCI express 1 (the one the quick guide from DFI said to use, I tried installing windows xp corp Sp2 once again and this time, I got a blue screen similar to the bad_pool_header, except this one says "pci.sys" and then says something like "page_fault_in_nonpaged_area", then goes on to say the usual check to make sure hardware is installed properly, ect...not sure if moving the PCI express vid card to the PCI express 1 slot solved the Bad_pool_header error but that one didn't come on this time.**

[Atomic Rooster]

How about sticking the video card into the PCIe 1 slot. Then see how the install goes.

[joker_927]

Your memory must be in both of the Orange slots.