[shuabert]

So here's my dillema. I'm sort of a novice in the hardware department. I've successfully swapped out hard drives and disc drives and transferred my mobo from an old case to a new one before so I recently attempted a more indepth overhaul. Namely, when my old computer died from what was likely a video card or motherboard fail (power still worked but there was no monitor display or POST beep anymore) I decided to swap out the old stuff for new and better parts. 
My PSU and case along with my 250 gb hard drive and my two dvd rom drives are fairly new, so I'm replacing the motherboard (from a nine-year old God knows what to a ASUS P5KPL-AM SE), processor (AMD Athlon64 to an Intel Core2Duo), RAM (PC133 to DDR2), and vid card (my old GeForce 2 for a new PowerColor HD4850). Running XP Home.
The build went successfully from what I can tell, though I'm not entirely certain how to hook up the IDE ribbons correctly when I have two DVD Rom drives since there are only three connectors and I have three drives plus the mobo connector.
Anyway, when I fired it up initially I got nothing. There was power, but I got a POST error (one long beep followed by two short beeps). Since I figured it might be that my old PSU isn't putting out enough power to supply this massive new video card, I removed the card to see what would happen.
Now I get the single long POST beep and a screen recognizing the motherboard and processor. I get as far as the screen that tells me Windows did not shut down properly but no matter what option I choose (safe mode, safe mode w/ command prompt, start windows normally, or last known good config) at this point the system simply restarts again with the single beep and I'm back at square one.
I'm aware of the pitfalls of swapping motherboards while trying to save the OS. I have my hard drive partitioned which means I should be able to keep my files intact despite a complete reinstall, yes? At this point I don't expect to be able to get away without reinstalling windows, but I can't figure out how to get the system to take the install disc so I can even do that. I don't know my way around BIOS very well.
My hope is that if I can get it booted up and running using the system's onboard video then I can worry about replacing the power supply with a higher wattage and installing the new video card at a later date.
I can provide more info if you need it, I'm just at a loss right now.

[Hybr!d]

What OS?

[shuabert]

It's XP home oem version that came with my prebuild in 2001. It has been reinstalled a couple of times since then when I've had a hard drive crash, etc.

[Carbon]

Make your windows CD the first priority on boot in the BIOS, insert it, hit a key to boot from CD if required, go through XP setup and reinstall XP on the partition it existed on before. XP will reformat and reinstall itself and shouldn't touch your data if the partitions are fine.

Also, if you buy a new PSU on the basis of wattage rather than quality you're likely going to run into the same problem. Wattage means nothing. Your original PSU probably had fine "wattage" but all its amps were on 5V.

[shuabert]

Originally Posted by Carbon

Make your windows CD the first priority on boot in the BIOS, insert it, hit a key to boot from CD if required, go through XP setup and reinstall XP on the partition it existed on before. XP will reformat and reinstall itself and shouldn't touch your data if the partitions are fine.

This is what I tried to do, but I can't get it to work. I'm wondering if I hooked up my IDE ribbons incorrectly. I have two DVD drives set to Master and Slave, and the System end of the ribbon is plugged directly into my motherboard. The problem then is that I can't figure out what to do with my Hard Drive or where to plug it into.

Originally Posted by Carbon

Also, if you buy a new PSU on the basis of wattage rather than quality you're likely going to run into the same problem. Wattage means nothing. Your original PSU probably had fine "wattage" but all its amps were on 5V.

I don't really know what this means, but I'll get the specs off the PSU I'm currently running and see what you guys think. All I know is that the guy at the store said that if my PSU was less than 350 watts I should think about upgrading because the video card would draw so much power.

[Carbon]

Almost all motherboards have two IDE slots...your present arrangement is fine but you'll need to plug in the HDD on another cable.

[shuabert]

Yeah, my old one had two IDE slots so it was fine. This one has one IDE slot and then two SATA slots; the problem with that is that there is nowhere to hook up SATA cables on any of my drives. Is there any way around that, like some kind of adaptor to convert IDE into SATA?

Also, I'm having trouble setting the disc drive to boot first. Can you walk me through that?

My CoolerMaster PSU says the following on the side:
460
Product No: RS-460-PCAR-A3
Atx 12V V2.3 W/O PFC
AC Input: 115/230V ~ 10/6A 60/50Hz
DV Output: +3.3V | +5V | +12V1 | +12V2 | -12V | +5VSB
22A | 25A | 18A | 18A | 0.5A | 2.5A
Max Power: 165W | 312W | 6W | 12.5W

The +3.3V & +5V & +12V1 & +12V2 combine power shall not exceed 401.5W

[Carbon]

Yeah, there are adapters but SATA DVD drives are like $25 and certainly any IDE disc drives are going to be rather slow anyway? You said they're rather recent, but it may not be worth it to get $10 adapters for slower drives.

Can't walk you through a BIOS of a motherboard I've never used, check your manual.

[shuabert]

I'll disconnect the one disc drive and put the hard drive in its place for now and see if that works. If I boot the disc drive first in the BIOS will it automatically play the Windows install disc or do I have to do something to get into it?

[Carbon]

You may have to hit a key to boot from CD.