New motherboard not booting right PLEASE HELP!

[wertyer]

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? 

[computeruler]

Did you reformat after installing the new motherboard?

[wertyer]

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.

[computeruler]

Ya it will probably work fine after you reformat

[TechGeek]

You don't need to reformat you just need to reinstall. If your install without formatting you won't lose any files.

[computeruler]

Its better to reformat first