Upgrade not working....HELP

[bronson]

Hi all
I had a p3 1ghz machine......so....
time for an upgrade
I bought myself an abit ai7, 1ghz mem, p4 3ghz cpu, heatsink and power supply.
ive put it all together, put in an ati graphics card and connected my old hard drives and dvd drive, now i cant get the thing started, it will go into the bios, but when i save and exit , it restarts the comp.
I can get to the screen where it says
"safe mode
safe mode with networking
safe mode with command prompt" etc etc. I've tried those and I've tried "start windows as normal" but all this does is restart. It seems to happen everytime i try to access the drive.
Do i have to reformat my hdd.
hard drive = western digital caviar 40 gig.
I have tried disconnecting everything that doesn't need to be connected.

Any ideas anyone

cheers in advance

bronson

 

[Blakhart]

Before I would format the drive and reinstall to see if that stopped your problems, I would try another video card, by a different maker. The change from a p3 system install to a p4 would be best done with a clean install.

 

[DonNagual]

Alright, this may be a stupid question, but....

Did you stick your hard drive from your old computer in your new one, and think it would boot up "as is", using the same windows install from your old computer?