Crappy XP Boot again

[imyourgodnow]

I have posted with this problem before, but I wanted to know how to get the PC back up and running. Now, having dealt with it at least 6 times in 3 months, I want to know why it might be happening or at lest what component might be the root of it all.

I am running XP Pro on a PIII 800 with RAID 0. I also have a sound card, TV card and NIC in there. The board is an Abit SA6R (Intel 815e chipset).

Basically when I try and boot, the PC detects all the drives, RAM and the CPU, runs through the RAID array detection, and then at the point where it tries and fails to boot from CDROM drives (as bootable XP CD not there obviously) and should then be bringing up the XP Pro screen, it stops dead. The light in the optical moue turns off, and the screen is blank. The HDD is making quiet sounds, but I have tried leaving it for a couple of hours and it doesn't actally do anything.

I have had to reinstall XP twice in a week now, so I'm sure you can understand how annoying this is.

 

[Rascal]

assuming that usb is disabled when the mouse light goes off, or perhaps isnt initializing at all, have you tried unplugging ALL usb devices and using the ps2 port for mouse instead?

 

[imyourgodnow]

I have a PS2 adapter for it, but the mouse is not really the problem as far as I can tell. I'll give it a go anyway though.........