I have only encountered this problem once when upgrading an older machine from '98
to XP Pro. Same symptoms exactly. Checking the hardware compatibility list revealed
that the onboard video chipset was not supported, which was really irritating because
that did not show up when checking for compatibility using the utility on the installation
CD. Luckily I have a few old PCI video cards lying around and found one that was
compatible, installed that and everything was fine afterwards. Hope this helps. Cheers.
Spexx.