Hi guys,
 
Just come back from a year long RTW journey, last stop being Hong Kong so decided to stock up on gear for a new rig which has now been build as follows:
 
Mobo: ASUS P5K/EPU
Pro: Intel C2D E8200 2.66GHz 6MB Cache (stock heatsink)
Mem: A-Data 2GB 800Hz Gaming Series (x2)
GFX: ASUS ATI EAH3650 Silent (512MB RAM)
HDD (to be): WD5000AAKS 500GB SATA II 7200RPM 16MB Cache (awaiting delivery today)
Audio: Creative X-Fi Pro gamer ed
PSU: 550W COLORSit
Optical: LG DVD writer drive (IDE), LG CD writer drive (IDE)
 
Right now down to the problem    
 
Connected up old HDD (using ide-usb convertor) that had my old xp system on it and tried to boot.
Failed to get past more than a sec into the XP loading screen before restart (although I swear I had set XP to halt not restart).
So wapped out the old disk and tried to give it a repair installation (need to keep data preserved).
Gained same problem.
Hunted down a bunch of different Ubuntu distributions, tried booting the live disks had this same outcome:
On splash silent start up it gets to the second splash loading screen (where the bar is incrementing in length instead of a small bar scrolling across), colours invert and nothing happens.
With Splash and Silent parameters removed the distributions get as far as registering the USB core driver, pauses then the following is displayed:
 
Please click box below

Your trying to boot of USB hdd its not recommend that you try that, i would only use the USB converter to transfer info back onto the new computer when you have got the new HDD and installed your OS

If I understand you correctly, what you are doing is a big no no.
 
You should never just try and pop a hard drive from one computer into another without first doing a clean format and install of operating system and drivers.
 
You are just asking for problems like this.
 
Wait until your new hard drive arrives and do a clean install on that.

Yeah, I know. Just am very impatient when I have new toys to play around with especially when most of the computers I have had access to over the past year have been running around 1Ghz processors with 256 ram ( even work which was very frustrating)
I think that my main problem with the ubuntu live cd's were that they all were over a year old and things have moved on alot since then.
I have now burned a copy of ubuntu 1.8 ultimate x64 and the live cd runs fine.
Thanks guys for the quick response tho