replaced warranty motherboard and now XP continually reboots...

I've seen a few posts on here about upgrading the motherboard and processor and having to go through nightmares to get their system up and running again (incidentally, for those of you doing this, the best means is to do what Microsoft calls an "in-place upgrade "--especially if you're getting Stop error 0x0000007B Inaccessable_Boot_Device. Read about how to do these in http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;[LN];316401
and http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;[LN];315341 ).

What I'm experiencing is similar but much screwier. I had a motherboard go bad and replaced it under warranty. It was an MSI-6566 and they sent me an MSI-6580. Now it only being a motherboard, I dropped the new motherboard in (there were no other changes to the hardware) and thought it would be all right. Of course it wasn't, and XP is rebooting continually. I can't even go into safe mode. There is a moment of a flash where it bluescreens and it says something about the hard drive, but it doesn't give me enough time to read it before it reboots.

So I figured I'd try the "in-place upgrade" after all but that's not working as the machine only has a restore cd and the Repair option isn't available. Here's what I've done so far...

I have tried:

1)Microsoft's suggested articles above, but the problem is that the version of XP I have with this machine comes on a Restore CD that doesn't give me the option of doing a Repair install.
2)Reimaging the machine (we have Drive Image w/Sys Prep images of this machine so that I don't have reinstall all the software. This, however, did not work. I can only surmise that this is the case because the image uses the old motherboard in it, though I thought the Sys Prep would take care of that and allow it to reinstall with the new motherboard. Apparently not because I get the same bluescreen.
2)I am currently reinstalling XP from the Restore CD and loading all the software. I'll post back with the outcome of this.

Anyone got any ideas about anything I could have done to make this go smoother (other than my "note to self below ")?

Note To Self: Always remember to make sure motherboards gotten under warranty are the same make & model. I thought this would be less of a hassle with XP than in the old NT days, but looks like that's not the case...

 

I am sorry about your system, there are experts here that can probably help you figure it out though. This is for everyone else:
Attention!
If you have XP, go to Control Panel/System/Advanced/ start up and recovery settings and UNCHECK the box in the middle of the page that says "Automatically restart" (it is checked by default) You will save yourself a lot of grief if you do this NOW, before you have a problem.

Good luck!
Johanna