I recently bought a new 9800GT and formatted to give my computer a nice fresh start. I had some issues when installing XP the first couple of times as after the install I would get a Windows XP screen with a loading bar that would move very slowly. One blue square of the bar would assemble going downwards i've done a bad drawing to help explain it better:
http://img9.imageshack.us/i/examplestartup.jpg/
One thing that is interesting is that one of the computers fans becomes noticeably quiet within about 1 second of the problem occuring. It doesn't seem to be an overheating issue with the GFX card as the one time i got into windows it was idling about about 43C. I can access Safe Mode however.
Cheers
http://img9.imageshack.us/i/examplestartup.jpg/
One thing that is interesting is that one of the computers fans becomes noticeably quiet within about 1 second of the problem occuring. It doesn't seem to be an overheating issue with the GFX card as the one time i got into windows it was idling about about 43C. I can access Safe Mode however.
Cheers