sb61g2 will not boot from hard disk, hangs on "Verifying d..

I just purchased an sb61g2 and attempted to install new cpu and
memory, and transfer existing hard disk, floppy disk and cd writer.

When I try to boot, it hangs at the "verifying dmi pool data". IDE
light is frozen on, I think.

The system can boot the windows xp installation disk. I've attempted
to repair the windows xp installation. It seems to work, and the final
step is to reboot. The system simply hangs again.

I can also boot from floppy.

I've swapped the memory with a single stick of memory from another
shuttle box (ss51) for no joy.

I've moved the harddisk cable around but have not tried another cable
yet. I checked the harddisk settings. This maxtor has a single setting
for "master/single", and the jumper is there.

Questions:
1) Is anyone else running this combination of box, cpu, and memory?
2) are there any bios settings I should examine?
3) I checked and the bios appears to be the most current, fb61s034.
Should I change the bios? to what?

Would a complete reinstall help? I installed a new version of xp onto
the same hard disk into a new directory without formating the disk.
This did not help. Is there something on my disk that is blocking the
boot process? Is there anyway to get rid of this thing on the disk
short for formating?

shuttle xpc sb61g2
intel pentium 4 2.40c 800 mhz hyper-threading
mushkin pc3200 1 stick 512 mb
maxtor 60 gb disk from existing pc
windows xp