Guys, maybe ya'll can help me out a little, I don't know where else to go. I'll provide as much info as I can. I was given a computer by a friend. The previoius owner said it worked fine until his hard drive crashed. So he bought a new one and took out his old hard drive to try and retrieve his old files. I have never owned one before and am new to all this. Heres the specs as I know them. Its an EPox EP-8KTA+ motherboard with an Athlon processor... the boot up string says 1000 mhz.
A1000AMT3B .It has a 3dfx Voodoo 5 video card in the slot. Has 2 DIMMs so i figure it at 256 for the memory.And they are pc133 compatible. It had no hard drive when I got it. So I bought an 80 gig Seagate Barracuda Hard drive. I thought it would be fairly simple. So I'm using Win2k professional ( thats all I have )and followed all the setup instructions. It follows through on the text part real good what with formatting and all. Its when it reboots to the graphical stage of installation that it hangs. It is hanging at the starting windows screen , even in safe mode. What can I do? I'm getting frustrated because I can't afford a new computer and it would be a shame to waste this one. Any help? God knows I need it
And please don't tell me to post in the appropriate forum...I don't know where else to go......Thanks in advance

Try running this program, it tests the RAM:
http://www.memtest.org/' ">http://www.memtest.org/

you are in the right forum bud .
is the heatsink dusty? and is there thermal compound between the cpu and heatsink, also what are the ratings of the PSU (they should be listed on a sticker).

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Desktop:
Phenom II x6 1055T @ 4GHz | 4x2GB Patriot DDR3 1600 @ 2000 | 3x AMD Radeon HD6970 Crossfire

Laptop:
Core i7 2960xm @ 4.2Ghz | 4x4GB Kingston DDR3 1866 | 2x GTX 580m SLI OC 725/1450/1500

During POST press and hold delete to enter the BIOS set up.

Once there you will be presented with a number of options, select "Load Failsafe Defaults" then choose to "Save and Exit CMOS" (or similar) This will load the safest, most stable settings that your BIOS has available. This may or may NOT be the problem but it is a good starting point.

Is this completely the same computer that your friend was using with the exception of the Hard Drive? (Power supply, memory, graphics card, Optical drive etc?)

How is the Hard drive doing in your friends new system? Does it work there?

Definately run a test from floppy of the RAM...and if you can find any other floppy launched diagnostics utilities to test the motherboard and CPU this might help also. I have a couple of different utilities I picked up off of PC magazine cover disks and there are others out there on the internet. These are mostly quite simple pieces of software but even so they ought to pick up any major hardware errors.

Look inside the case, around the CPU...there are a LOT of capacitors there (the big green and gold barrels that are sticking up.) do any of them look like they are misformed as if they are bulging from within or can you see any sticky residue (electrolyte, dont touch) this would indicate that they are on their way out and you may need another motherboard, or a bag full of new capacitors and a crash course in soldering.

Keep posting, I have two if these motherboards, both running 1200+ Athlon thunderbirds, and they have been pretty stable for about 4 years and are still running OK.