thanks-
yeah, I plan on using the usb hard drive to backup everything, but I'll just do cat5 to cat5 once I'm to that point.

Had to back track a bit, and it was my fault...before trying to install xp again, (on a different partition,) I tried to change the memory timing, and the system just "cranks the starter", doesn't ever boot up, tries repeatedly but never "catches".
If I put the jumper on "configuration", then it'll start up, but no screen or anything. So, had to take out the cmos battery. Stupid me, after it didn't work, re-read the instructions, you have to unplug the power supply too- it has to go dead to reset the bios, and being plugged in keeps it alive I guess. We'll know in a few minutes, it says wait an hour.
Anyway- once that's back on I'm going to reflash the bios, and try something else I discovered....how to turn off or on ACPI support- xp may or may not see that the mobo has it, you can press f5 when installing and it says press f6 for scsi or raid drivers, and that will take you to the HAL (hardware abstraction layer) where you can pick which type of ACPI you have. It's a long shot, but maybe that will help xp get past the blue screens.
If that doesn't work, I am going to find an old video card to put in, pretty sure that's an issue also....Vista installed it, but said the drivers were old and wouldn't get out of VGA mode- I updated, and it runs fine now, looks fantastic- and fast.
I'm also going to set the bios to the defaults or the safe mode if it has that, to see if I can get by the video card driver issue....I think my components are too new for this old xp cd to recognize. Would be easier if I had an xp sp2 (or 3)boot cd.....

The bluescreens (which I had previously referred to as crashes) kept on coming last night and this afternoon. Apparently, my nVidia NForce SATA Driver needed to be updated. I updated it, but also uninstalled SP1. I really hope this finally puts an end to the bluescreens of death.

I would not recommend running Vista without the service pack....

So, I should re-install it? What if I get more bluescreens even though I updated that nVidia driver?

As we've been discussing, incompatible h/w and drivers can be a problem - and it's hard for the average person to distinguish between that and the core operating system. more than likely, it was the driver and video card that was crashing it.

Wait 24 hours, then re-install. If it crashes, you can use system restore to roll back.

Chances are - the service pack didn't 100% de-install anyhow, and now the system is mixed.

yes.... because the system configuration "gens" itself at install and specifies the h/w in the registry. XP wouldn't understand new devices to gen.... if you bought a new device, chances are fro XP you'd install a driver from the product's CD or from the net. But from scratch... with an old CD....

I don't know if Microsoft still ships SP2 CDs. They are trying to march us all to Vista.

TY,

You can order an SP3 CD.... maybe that will fix the problem for your dual boot.

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/products/windowsxp/sp3/default.mspx

for everyone else... this is interesting - I missed this anouncement last week:

Announced on June 5th:

http://www.infoworld.com/article/08/06/05/How-to-get-and-keep-Windows-XP-after-June-30_1.html


http://www.microsoft.com/windows/products/windowsxp/future.mspx




There are questions and answers on the page ... basically, updates will be free until April, 2009. After that, users can purchase extended support from Microsoft until 2014. Shrink wrapped copies will no longer be sold after June 30, 2008. Dell,HP, Lenovo, etc - will stop selling XP after June 30th.

Kat- well, it's back. First thing I did was go buy a copy of XP Pro SP2. (Glad I did it, after reading that article!)
I was going to have to anyway, for a dual boot, within the 30 days, and they don't let you update without having it activated.

Had to do the cmos rundown, reformatted and partitioned the drives using recovery (xp was not friendly about letting me format them all first....) got the settings in the bios right, XPSP2 loaded onto C: drive on first try. Wow.
Set Vista up as F: drive ( three partitions on each drive.) Setup did fine, had to retry a couple of driver installations, found I was doing them in the wrong order- and also upped it to SP1.

Now have true dual boot, networking doing fine on either, graphics looking really good.
No weird boot problems.

Yet.

HAD to turn off AUC, that is SO annoying.

Next is a fresh anti virus, sort of wondering if that's OS dependent, I'm assuming so, got CA's stuff from Tiger too; they were giving it with a system purchase, and three licenses for a year.

By the way, MS is giving a free 5 gig of storage online now- don't remember what they're calling it, but may try it out.

Thanks for your help- I had forgotten the first rule, which is (aside from remain calm) KISS. Keep it simple, stupid.
I've tried to document everything as I went in case it all blows up tomorrow, but it's done great all day.

Next up, application software, after a quick couple of Sandra benchmarks.

Whew....

Later
TY

Another blue screen occurred! The reason was:

So, now, I'm downloading and installing SP1 again. This time, I'll keep it. But I know I'm going to get more blue screens.