XP Pro Help [Didn't want to hijack LaFlame's Post]

Ok, I'm another noob trying to install XP Pro on my newly built PC.

This is what I'm working with
AMD Athlon 64 3800+ Orleans Socket AM2 Processor
MSI K9N SLI Platinum Socket AM2 nForce 590 ATX Motherboard
Diablo Silver Chrome UL ATX 450 watt PSU
XFX Geforce 7600GT 256MB PCI Express x16
Western Digital Caviar SE 160GB WD1600JS 7200 RPM SATA HDD
OCZ Platinum 1GB DDR2 800

At first everything seemed to go smoothly, but then I got a BSOD.
So I manually rebooted and tried the installation again; another BSOD.
I did it one more time and it got to the Setup is starting windows message. So I figured it'd take a while and walked away. I come back a few minutes later and the screen is red.


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WTF?


I retried a few more times and again red screen. It would freeze when it would get to the red screen of course so I'd try again by manually rebooting.

I started thinking maybe it was the hard drive having problems. So I went to the Western Digital site and downloaded some drivers and put them on a floppy. I tried the F6 during the installation to manually install the drivers and it seemed to work but then when it gets to the Setup is starting windows I get a BSOD.

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Am I supposed to format my new SATA WD HDD? If so, how? I bought it OEM from Newegg so I definately didn't get any software with it.

To my knowledge, you have to format and partition ANY new HD. I'd even do that to ones that may come pre-set up like that. (Unless there were software on it)

if you've already installed it, did you leave your installation disk in?

The format is part of the Windows install process. Setup won't continue without formatting if the drive isn't already formatted.

I have a dual-core Opteron on an NForce4 SLI32 (S939) board and don't need SATA drivers during install for stand-alone (non-RAID) drives, since the chipset handles them as native IDE devices. The 590 being a newer chipset, I would expect the same, but I must confess since building this last rig, I haven't kept up on the new Nvidia AM2 chipsets.

Even if you didn't have the right drivers, Setup shouldn't crash, it should just tell you that it cannot find any HDD's.

According to this artcle[=http//support.microsoft.com/kb/315335]this artcle you might have some bad memory.

I recommend running a memory tester, I like to use Microsoft RAM tester[=http//oca.microsoft.com/en/windiag.asp]Microsoft RAM tester. Download the file and you can make a boot CD or boot floppy. Run the [baa66d2b277]extended[/baa66d2b277] diagnostics and post what you find. If your 1GB of ram is actually 2x512, try running the test on each module individually.

I posted my dilemma at [H]ardForums and it [i1ecac219da]was[/i1ecac219da] my ram.
http//hardforum.com/showthread.php?p=1029689182#post1029689182

I had put it in the wrong slot.

Well, now that I felt I was in the home stretch, I'm being plagued by BSODs again.

It gets to the "Setup is copying files" stage and I get a bunch of BSODs and it tells me that it can't copy some files before that happens. I checked the ram with memtest again and it's doing fine.

I keep getting
STOP 0x0000008E
STOP0x00000050
STOP 0x000000D1

Anyone know what I might need to check now?