Windows XP boot issues, Please help

[dralavant]

i just upgraded my MOBO and videocard in my setup and this is what im running now.

Asus M2N-SLI MOBO
AMD Athalon 64 x2 3800+ CPU
4GB Ram
250GB WD SATA HDD
100GB WD IDE HDD
Nvidia XFX 8600GTS xxx edition Graphics card

and my issue is this. i had vista, finally got rid of it and bought a new copy of xp pro with sp2. now, when i go to boot windows xp (the install process took 5 hours) it just hangs for what seems like ever. i just reinstalled xp because it got hung up booting for 5 1/2 hours last night and just wouldnt boot today. what is seeming to happen is that something is wrong with my boot order or something but i dont know. it goes past my BIOS and POST and then if the windows xp cd is not in, it will just give me one of 5 different DOS error messages. once and a while it will give me the option to tell me i can boot xp, and then tell me its missing files and cant boot, so i put the cd in, and let windows boot, and it just sits on the windows loading bar for a very long time, shortest today being 17 minutes, longest being over an hour. is there something im not doing right? or a way to make this not slow enough to make me never want to turn my pc off again?

 

[kimsland]

Asus M2N-SLI MOBO
AMD Athalon 64 x2 3800+ CPU
4GB Ram
250GB WD SATA HDD
100GB WD IDE HDD
Nvidia XFX 8600GTS xxx edition Graphics card

and my issue is this. i had vista, finally got rid of it and bought a new copy of xp pro with sp2. ..

Xp doesn't see 4Gig of Ram, unless it's 64Bit
trying removing 2 Gig of it.

Also when you installed Xp, did you also remove the partition (ie not just format)

 

[dralavant]

Yeah, i always remove and format. also, it sees it as 3.25gb of ram, not 4gb.

 

[BlackKnight8]

Try saving all you want to keep, and don't format it but scrub your HD thoroughly with something like Zero Fill, then treat it with Disc Genius, then re-install your XP Pro.. when you have done that, load in what you saved.

 

[kimsland]

trying removing 2 Gig of it.

Not done ?

 

[dralavant]

Not done ?

i had xp pro when i got the 4gb of ram and it worked fine. the problem is since i put in my new mobo, not the ram.

 

[dralavant]

Try saving all you want to keep, and don't format it but scrub your HD thoroughly with something like Zero Fill, then treat it with Disc Genius, then re-install your XP Pro.. when you have done that, load in what you saved.

and where can i get this zerofill, and/or disc genius? and i have everything i want saved on a different partition of my SATA drive.