Friend gave me a nice custom built P4 2.6 GHz w/ no hdd.
Crappy GPU, replaced it with a GTX 460.
Took the SATA hdd out of my old dead machine, XP Home, plopped it in the new machine to see what would happen (fingers crossed), and it would boot and I'd see an XP splash screen but then would just flash a quick blue screen and go to the recovery b&w screen.
But I saw the XP progress bar, figured it was a good sign.
Put in an original XP disc, changed the BIOS to boot from CD, and now it will not do anything except beep 3 times, occasionally blaring 10 seconds of speaker squawk. Won't post, won't boot, won't show the splash screen.
Can't even get to BIOS (Gigabyte MB, Award BIOS) to change any of the boot settings. 20 times, can't get to BIOS.
Have jumped the CMOS pins, removed and replaced the CMOS battery, reset the cables for the CPU and the video, reset the memory and video card, tried from 1 stick of memory up, changed the SATA HDD cable and pin connections, clicked my heels, and drunk beer.
Any other ideas appreciated.
Thanks