XP Pro install, continuous rebooting

[Curio]

Are you booting from the XP CD to start the install?
At what exact point does it go into a reboot loop? Is it the stage when it has copied the first set of files to start the install and then it reboots to the hard disk. If so try and see exactly what stage it reboots at and make sure the boot sector protection in the BIOS is set to disabled/off or whatever they have.

[roadster]

Tried a known good graphics card, still the same

Boot from XP CD,
Drive formats OK
"Setup is copying files etc."

PC will now reboot (timer)

At this point the PC reboots and reboots and reboots

and make sure the boot sector protection in the BIOS is set to disabled/off or whatever they have.

Couldn't find anything in the BIOS like this.

[Kane]

Try this

Bare Bones Troubleshooting Installation

Remove everything that is installed or connected to your computer so the only things remaining in the case are:
Motherboard, processor, and cooling fan
Graphics card
One stick of RAM
One hard drive
One CD ROM drive
That's it. No sound card, no network interface card, no modem, no extra hard drives or CD ROM drives. Especially important is not to have more than one memory stick, and it should be a minimum of 128MB. Connect up the monitor, the keyboard and the mouse and power up the machine. Go into the BIOS settings and look for a setting for the basic BIOS default configuration. Select it, then make sure that if you're booting from a CD ROM that the CD drive is the first boot device.
Reboot and let the installation process begin. I haven't kept track of numbers, but in the vast majority of cases the installation was completed with no problem. Once you have the basic operating system in place it's a simple matter to start adding back in the extra memory, drives, and devices that were stripped out initially.

http://www.theeldergeek.com/bare_bon...stallation.htm
http://kadaitcha.cx/cannot_install.html

[roadster]

Re.

Bare Bones Troubleshooting Installation

I have already tried that, but thanks anyway. I'll give it one more go then strip it for parts I think.

As the thing almost works and passes all tests I just get the feeling that it has to be something in the BIOS but I can't see what.

Yours frustratedly

Roadster