XP clean install setup hangs at first reboot, then again.

I've just got a new motherboard, cpu & hard disk, which are: Asus P5pe-VM i865 chipset mainboard, P4 lga775 3.2ghz cpu, and a western digital caviar 8mb cache 160gb sata hard disk.

The rest of my system consists of 2x512mb kingston PC3200 ram, an iomega IDE dvd burner and an LG dvd rom drive.

When I run windows XP setup, I create a 140gb primary partition and format it with NTFS (have tried regular and quick format). It does this ok then copies files. When it gets to it's first reboot, the progress bar fills up (or I press enter to restart) and then it just sits at the setup screen with the status bar saying "restarting computer". It sits like this indefinitely.

If I hit reset, it picks up at the graphical setup stage, but then hangs somewhere in the middle of 'installing devices'. I have to manually reset again, and then it will get through until the next reboot (I believe after all the timezone, computer name etc. part), where it will hang again on a plain blue background with an unmovable mouse pointer.

I've tried a few things so far (swapping the optical drives, adjusting power management settings in the bios, PnP OS setting etc.) but nothing seems to have worked.

If anyone has a suggestion as to what else I might try to troubleshoot, I'd very much appreciate it. Thanks in advance.

You have three, four possibilities.

An overheating CPU. When you replaced the mobo, was the CPU already in place, or did you or somebody install it? You may have a heat transfer problem. Pad damage; paste improperly applied - or not at all?

Bad memory module. You or someone, burn the "Memtest" bootable cd and run it for four hours. If your sticks are okay, there will be no text in the bottom pane.

A faltering power supply. The only way for a lay person to test this is to swap it out. Either buy a spare and replace it; or borrow one from a friend for a day (make sure it's a physical match & close to the wattage rating.)