New system, needing help!

[cwr89]

Ok, I've never ever ever ever have this much trouble with a new system.

specs:

Core 2 quad Q8200
Asus P5Q-E
4Gb Corsair Ballistics
Radeon HD 3650
IDE DVD burner
SATA 500GB HDD
Antec Sonata II
600W Antec PSU

Now, I get it all put together. fire it up and it posts and boots from the CD wonderfully. I get into the Windows XP Pro installation and crash. restarts and crash. after 5 or so hours of fighting with it I finally get windows XP installed. Initially I was trying to use an old PCI expansion card that was fighting with the installation but I got that taken care of. so I go to log in and start reconstruction my PC. It freezes on the login screen just after I type my password and hit enter. its done this about 60 times.

I am now back in the re-installing process.

this is my 3rd system with a P5Q in it and I love the mainboard. but I've read that this could be a chip set problem. I don't want to rip up another system to try a different motherboard. but I got the HDD plugged into my other system and its fine.
I know the ram doesn't conflict as I did check that in both my other systems using memtest on both machines.

what do you think?
your guess is as good as mine.

~Casey

 

[hikaricloud]

Moved to the right section.

It sounds like you're having some motherboard problems...you said you've had it for a while, right?

 

[cwr89]

nope, I opened the box from newegg yesterday. I fought with it all day yesterday.

 

[hikaricloud]

Hmm. It's possible it's defective...

Mobo is most likely. The GPU is a possibility , but not as likely.

I would say RMA it, or if you have another one laying around, try that one to confirm with all the current parts to narrow it down.

 

[cwr89]

confirmed the ram, hdd, videocard, and dvd burner on my other systems.

 

[hikaricloud]

So it's the motherboard then. I guess your best bet is to RMA.