Hi - I just got a computer off a friend of mine at work and tried several times to get the power to boot-up consistently. Initially, I took an HD from an older computer which was like a 3 Gig (I think) just to see if it would work. I used to have XP on that HD and thought it would work for this PC. At the start it would power up fine and read the blud screen of death with some sort of HD failure. The second time reads that it needs to boot from disk A and did that several times (at the time the floppy was not plugged in).

When I tried to do that again the computer would not start up. I tried several power supplies and basically would not start up the second time. I am not sure if its' the HD/Motherboard/Power supply/case and need some assistance! Any help is greatly appreciated as this is my first real build on a PC-thanks!

The PC is:

AMD - Athlon 1200
512 RAM
3 GIG HD (as a tester)
32 MB video card (nVidia)
Internal Sound
CD/RW Drive
Cooler Max Case (I think)

Hi there Babyboxer!
Welcome to PC Help Forums!

It is not possible to use a Windows XP installation on a harddisk in another computer. You will only be able to use it in the computer where it was installed on. That's because all the hardware, mainboard etc. are set in the Windows XP installation, so if you try to run with a complete different hardware combination, this will cause problems.

Bluefish

Hi Bluefish - thanks for the reply! Would that still cause the power to be interrupted with multiple power supplies and if so how would I be able to load XP? Boot disk through drive A or CD?

Hey there babyboxer.

Does the machine turn on and stay on when you have no hard drive connected?

Could you check to make sure that your CPU and PSU fan are working.

Hi Zimbo - The PC doesn't even turn on even with the MB/CPU connected. I checked the power supply the I did initially and it was like 120V and the second was 200V - do you think this has something to do with it even though they both worked the first time?

Do you have another power supply that you could try in your machine?
Looking at your last post it sounds like it is PSU related.