Win XP Pro Prob

[TANK]

I'm having problems with XP Pro and my WD 40g Caviar HD. The HD will randomly start accessing its self for no apparent reason and will not shut off. The computer freezes, CTRL ALT DEL will not even work. I have to restart the computer to get anything to work. I've contacted WD and they believe that XP did not load properly and may be causing the problem. I reloaded XP and still had the same prob, switched out drives, still prob and I'm totally stuck. I've updated all drivers, chipsets ect. The sys is new, heres the specs:

ASUS A7N8X-X
AMD Athlon XP 2500+
Asus 52x CD
Samsung 52x CD-RW/DVD combo
512k Mushkin PC3200 DDR mem
WD 40g 8mb buffer HD
Creative SB Live! 5.1
PNY Geforce FX5900 128mb

Any help you guys can give would be great. My next option is too try loading a copy of XP home that I have and see if the problem is the same. I built a sys using an ASUS A7V8X-X a couple months ago using same specs and didnt have any problems at all. Crazy. Wheres my old copy of Win98?

Thanks

[Cricket]

Is the system overclocked when you're installing the OS?

Try replacing the IDE cables.

Try installing the OS from the other optical drive (if you installed from the ASUS, try the Samsung...if you installed from the Samsung, try the ASUS).

Cricket

[TANK]

Got it figured out. The NVIDIA Chipset driver update had an option to install a high speed ide driver which in the fine print said it could cause erratic hardware behavior on certain hard drives. So I rolled back the driver and no more problems. Its usually always something simple. Thanks for the help Cricket