Boots into Safe Mode

[blinksumgreen]

My brother just bought the parts for a computer and put it together, but when he tries to boot the computer it will boot into Windows XP Safe Mode. If he tries to switch back to regular it crashes. Neither one of us has ever built a computer before this.

The only part that isn't brand new is the hard drive (which itself is only about 6 months old), which we tried moving from our old computer. I was wondering if you had to format the hard drive or if you could just install the new drivers and it would work?

[glc]

A repair install may work (procedure in Tips and Tricks) but a clean fresh start is always best.

[blinksumgreen]

We ended up just doing a fresh install and it seems to be running fine now (we used a re-install disk that had Windows XP SP 2 on it). Now it won't connect to the internet and we can't figure it out. We tried following its wizard for connecting to a broadband connection, but we had no luck.

I'd also like to say that we have a Windows 7 Ultimate disk, but it's upgrade only. So we're simply trying to get XP running and verified so we can upgrade the computer to Windows 7. Would just trying to register XP over the phone and then installing Windows 7 and connecting to the internet be easier? Or are we just missing something really simple when it comes to XP?

[glc]

You need to install the motherboard chipset drivers and the onboard ethernet drivers to connect to the Internet. If you have a router, you don't even need the wizard, it will just work.

You don't have to install XP to install Win 7 from an upgrade disk, we can't tell you directly here how to do it, but if you do some Googling you will find the procedure.