Ok I have been trying to upgrade my computer for the past year and nothing has ever actually worked, so I just decided to get a new motherboard. The motherboard is a Gigabyte MA74GM-S2 I am using 2 IDE HARD drives with it. So i finally got everything HOOKED up and at first it seems to start up fine but thenI get to a screen where it says windows did not SHUT down properly and I choose to start up normally (I've treid safe mode but the exact same thing happens) and then the computer restarts and goes back to the bios screen. I also have a 600w psu 512mb of RAM (I'm going to borrow some from my friend 2marro and then I'l have a gig. And my processor (which i bought with the motherboard) is AMD A64 X2 4400+2.30Ghz OEM. I also have windows XP SP3 32bit installed. Can someone please help me? Did you reformat after installing the new motherboard?No, but I really dont want to have to loose everything on my computer. But if you really think that will make it work I guess I will. As long I can keep my other HD the same.Ya it will probably work fine after you reformatYou don't need to reformat you just need to reinstall. If your install without formatting you won't lose any files.Its BETTER to reformat first