Take the 2-minute tour ×  This is for a computer with the
following configuration:  Asus P5KPL-AM/PS motherboard Pentium D
820 (dual core 2.8 GHz) 1 x 2 GB DDR2-800 Transcend RAM 1 SATA2
Samsung 160 GB HDD PS/2 generic Keyboard USB Razer mouse  The
computer was working fine till a month ago with a Hitachi HDD in
place of the Samsung. But that drive died and I sent it in for
warranty replacement. Since then and till last week, the
computer had not been turned on. I then got hold of a spare but
XPSP2-loaded Samsung drive from another computer and decided to
get this computer temporarily running. However, when I tried to
boot into XP, it didn't load. It got stuck at the first
graphical screen. When trying Safe Mode, the file list would be
updated up to diskio.sys and then freeze. If I tried to boot
Kubuntu off a CD, I would get past the first menu, but then get
stuck at the subsequent graphical interface in the loading
process. A similar thing happened with a friend's Windows XP-on-
a-pen-drive.  I switched the R