alright, i got a free pc from work (sans-HDD, they made me destroy all those in my free time). i put my 160gb hitachi drive that i used to have in my desktop in it, along with a spare ati 9200, since it will just be for web surfing. mobo is generic Intel, onboard gpu, 2.4ghz P4, 512 RAM.
i boot from cd, allocate half the disk for the OS, quick format, and install. after the first reboot the screen goes black and wont load the OS. i reset, and i get an error message on the black screen similar to this, but different .dll file: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/320252
i try the install again, then i get the hal.dll file seen above error message. so i follow the instructions in the link and completely format the partition before the install. after the reboot, the screen goes all black and i can't do anything except reset. i take the disk out and try it again, and i still get the hal.dll error message.