Computer Technical Assistance Request ^(n-1)

[Black Aeronaut]

Arrrgh.  My big hand-built gaming machine (from 4 years ago) had a mobo failure last week.  With the holiday weekend coming up and an insane work schedule, I opted to just buy local rather than go bargain-shopping online.  So, while I probably need to upgrade my video card (GeForce 9800) again, it'll serve for the moment.  I swapped out the old mobo/memory/processor for a 6-core i7, 8GB DDR3 RAM, and an ASUS Sabertooth mobo (overkill, but I want to stay ahead of the "upgrade to play games" curve for at least a few years).  So far, so good.  But when I tried to boot XP, as soon as I got past the "XP or Recovery Console" menu, it went straight to BSOD.  Not the normal BSOD, but the "Windows has shut down to prevent damage to your hardware" one.  Trying normal boot, Safe Mode, and Recovery Console all ended the same way.
So, I figured it was probably a driver issue, and using an XP boot CD in repair mode would fix things up.  So (since I can't find my original CD, thanks to the basement flood last year), I obtained an XP-SP3 .iso, figuring that it would be okay, since my install key is totally legit.
Problem is, once I got the CD to boot, as soon as the CD boot process got to the "Starting Windows" message, it BSOD'd again.  With the "shutting down to avoid damaging hardware" message.  

Here's the kicker:  I've booted this thing with a Linux boot CD and run it for hours with no trouble.  And when running Linux, I can access the original XP boot drive and pull files from it.  All the hardware checks out as far as I can tell.  So WTF won't even the XP boot CD start up?  
The only thing I can think of is that I'm using 32bit XP on 64bit hardware.  But I've never had trouble doing that before.  So why now?  I could just bite the bullet and buy a copy of Win7 64bit, but if my hardware has somehow developed some sort of Windows allergy.....

I'll tell you what your problem is right now.  It is very much likely that there are no WinXP drivers for your mobo and/or CPU.  Windows and other hardware manufacturers are slowly phasing out XP support because they're moving on to bigger things.  In fact, I've recently downloaded the installer for Microsoft's preview of Windows 8.  No, I am not kidding.  For the most part it's Windows 7 only redesigned to work most effectively with tablet PCs, but it'll also work on laptops and desktops fairly well.