I had the same issues. Exactly. The system is the same as well with the
exception of the processor which is a 3700.
Tryed.
New optical drives.
Memory
Video card
Power supply.
Reseat CPU and heatsink

What finally worked was I had another system and swapped the 3700 for the
3200.
Things ran great.
I have heard and researched problems with some models of optical drives.
Sony and Plextor
Bios issues with some processors.

I want to flash the Bios and trade back but no time yet.
By the way the 3700 works in the other comp So.....

Hope this helps.

If anyone else has the issue what is the final fix.

"Ian" u18443@uwe wrote in message news:5b70888ed7921@uwe...
I have just assembled a new PC: as follows:
ASUS A8N SLI SE
Athlon 64 3200+
200GB Barracuda S150 SATA
1GB Kingston KVR400X64C3A/1G RAM
HP DVD L/Scribe
Gainward GF 6500 256MB PCIE graphics card.
New OEM version of XP Pro.

XP Pro installation took over 10 hours - disk formatting 1 partition was
fairly quick and all the Windows directories were created quickly, then
the
filecopying bit fron the CD took about 5 hours and the actual installation
took another 5 hours.
When copying, the DVD drive light would flash as it read some data, then
it
would sit there for minutes before there was any HD light activity.

When XP was eventually running it is very slow - it takes many minutes to
start up then everything takes an age to happen, i.e click on a button -
no
initial response, then 10-20 secs later something happens.

Any clues anyone?