Rebuilt computer and it wont work

[oxiclean]

Hi all.
I recently fried my motherboard(long story). I bought the ABIT VT7 to replace it. I installed the RAM, video card, and all that good stuff. I get the beep sound and the computer starts up. I get to the loading screen and after about 2 bars.. it restarts and does teh whole thing over again. I have tried adjusting the bios. I have connected, dis connected and reconnected cords. I just cant find the problem. here are my system specs

ABIT VT7 motherboard
P4 northwood 2.8 ghz processor
2 gigs of wintec DDRSD RAM 400mhz
160 gig MAXTOR SATA drive
ATI RADEON 9600 all in wonder (soon to be RADEON x700 )
400 watt power supply

I believe that it is the system doesnt detect my SATA drive. I tried doing the thing where you boot off the windows disk. put in the SATA driver floppy and chose the right driver (not sure which one is right for me). but i do that and it still doesnt detect the hard drive. Its odd, it detects my drive but it wont boot off of it. also there is no BIOS option to enable a SATA drive. I AM SO CONFUSED!!!!!! Any help would be greatly appriciated.

 

[oxiclean]

Oh i used the same sata drive with windows xp on it and all my stuff. do i have to reformat??

 

[Crais]

...you haven't reformatted after installing new MBO? Reformat, reinstall windows (don't forget sata drivers), and it should work.

 

[oxiclean]

thx for the help. i fixed it. to prevent data loss i actually installed 2 copies of windows xp on my system. i am gunna use a xternal hd from work and get my data off of it then format and reinstall.