Any beep codes?

There are several things that can cause this, overheating is one of them. If you haven't done so recently, you should open the case and clean it either with canned air or -- carefully -- with a...

That's interesting... I wonder if Nero or Microsoft are aware of this problem... :confused:

Glad you got it figured out and thanks for letting us know what it was in case it comes up again :)
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Do you mind telling us what you did in case it comes up again?

Wow, that didn't sound like a hard drive problem to me. Thanks for letting us know how you fixed it :)

Marking this as solved, even though you did it on your own :D

I'm not sure what you mean by 'going in circles,' does it keep rebooting itself? You can't get into msconfig to uncheck SAFEMODE?

Can you boot to your XP CD? (Still assuming you have XP)

Try msconfig and see if it will work that way.

Did you delete the entire folders or just the contents? If just the contents, it shouldn't have created any problems. I'm not sure what happens if you delete the folders themselves.

Try using...

If you're trying F8 and it's not working, it's most likely a matter of timing. I prefer the msconfig route myself, I've never even tried the F8 (but that is the most common way).

Here are complete instructions for installing XP; go through it and see if you made any mistakes. Even if you don't think you did, start over and try again. If you can't get the CD to work, get the...

What OS do you have? Since you said it's new, I'll assume it's XP.

There are two ways to do this:

The most common is to reboot your computer and then repeatedly hit F8 while it's booting up.
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What BIOS do u have? You can try doing a search for 'beep codes' for your particular BIOS and see what that code means.

You might find it here:
http://www.pchell.com/hardware/beepcodes.shtml