Weird Problem while installing win2k

So I upgraded my parents computer from their old 1ghz Amd duron (i think it was) and Aopen motherboard (forget model atm) and decided to use those old parts to upgrade my brothers 300mhz p2.

So i go and slick the hard drive, throw in his win2k cd, format, install and everything is going ok. After it installs, it reboots, loads up the Win2k logo screen and after the blue bar indicates it's loaded, the screen disappeared and seemed to get a blue screen saying it was dumping memory or something and would reboot. It was stuck in this cycle endlessly and the blue screen only lasted for about half a second so i could never read what the error was.

after hours of frustration and numerous re-installs and formatting, i just take the motherboard and processor out, put in the old p2 and re-install again, and everything works perfectly.

All the components that i used for the 1ghz AMD/mobo are in the p2/mobo and working just fine. This narrows it down to either the cpu or motherboard. The strange part is, all the parts were working fine in the first computer i upgraded. Only difference i can tell is the PSU.

Would having a 230w PSU instead of a 300w PSU cause such a problem? maybe not enough juice? i didn't have a spare PSU to throw in and test and my bro didn't have enough money to buy one.

Just wondering if anyone had any suggestions on what could have caused it. I currently have the CPU with me and my parents are gonna ship the motherboard to me later and i might throw together a rig or something if i can get 'em to work once i figure out what coulda been causing those errors.

any help would be appreciated and sorry for the semi-long post

Could very well be the PSU. Install problems are almost always hardware conflicts. Did you have any other stuff installed at the time, like a NIC, modem or sound card?

The PSU or RAM is probably the culrpit, try some different RAM, and if possible, a better PSU. A 230w psu that I'm assuming is somewhat generic isn't gonna cut it...

Also, it's possible the system hive/registry was corrupted, that cuases the bsod and restart problem. Sometiems you can repair it and Windows will work just fine. I recall recoving one that messed up a few days after in installation, after recovering the hive the installation ran perfectly for over a year.

See this kb article: http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;826721&Product=win2000

I see that Breadfan beat me to the idea. Are you using different RAM in each MB? Usually problems like that are from RAM. That is to say, you have a bad install. Bad install ~ bad RAM. Not always but that's where I would put my $$ if I were to bet on it.

stool also has a good point. Only have the hardware you need during the install.

Did you have any other stuff installed at the time, like a NIC, modem or sound card?

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yes i did, but i used all those parts when i put the p2 cpu/motherboard back in and they all worked fine. I took Ram sticks out, sound, nic's all one at a time and still received the same error, but once i swapped back to the p2, every loaded fine and ran smoothly.

I'm just assuming that the low rated PSU is the culprit at this point since the motherboard/cpu were working fine in my parents computer before i upgraded that. The only thing that was different between my parents old computer and my brothers would be the case and PSU. All the ram, HD, NIC, etc were all the same.

Are you using different RAM in each MB?

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nope, the ram from the AMD board, i put in the P2 board (some old pc-133 i think) and it's running just fine.

I'm just thinking that the p2 power requirements are less than the AMD and with the 230w psu, it's not enough juice to powerup the motherboard all the way and causing an error or something. Once i get the motherboard here and get some cheap ram and a small HD i'll try to fire it up and see if i can get it to work with a spare PSU i have lying around here.

Thanks for the feedback fellas.