MCE2005 will not clean install. Help!

I cannot get MCE2005 to install.

I'm stuck at the blue "Setup is starting WindowsXP" screen.

I've just built an XP Pro SP2 system with the same motherboard, CPU,
memory, HDDs, floppy drive, PSU, video card and sound card. SATA HDDs
not RAID.

MCE2005 System:
Motherboard: Asus A8N32-SLI Deluxe nForce4 SLI X16
CPU: Athlon 64 X2 4800+ Dual Core S939 Toledo
HSF: Zalman CNPS9500 LED Copper CPU Heat Sink 92MM Fan
RAM: 2GB (Corsair XMS-3500LL PRO 2GB kit) PC3500 CL2/1T
CASE: Antec P180 mid-tower case w/4 120mm Antec TriCool fans
Drive Bay Fan Controller: Thermaltake Hardcano13 5.25in multi-function
PSU: Enermax Liberty EL620AWT 620W Modular PSU ATX12V v2.2
Video Card: ATI Radeon X1800XT 512MB PCI-E Dual DVI HDTV-OUT
(component & S-video OUT to 36” Sony Wega XBR-400 NTSC HD ready TV).
Tuner card: ATI TV Wonder Elite Theatre 550 PRO PCI
HDD: 2 x 500GB Seagate Barracuda 7200.9 500GB SATA 3Gb/s 7200RPM 16MB
Burner: BenQ DW1655 Lightscribe DL DVD+RW16X16X8 DVD-RW16X16X4
CDRW48X48X32 DVD Burner Black W/ SW
FDD: Mitsumi
Sound Card: Turtle Beach Montego DDL 7.1 S/PDIF optical OUT to
Denon AVR-3802 7x110W based HT System
Microsoft Remote Control w/USB receiver OEM for MCE2005.
Mouse/Keyboard: Microsoft Remote Keyboard for WindowsXP MCE
Etc

Note: The MS Remote and Remote keyboard aren't connected yet.
I'm temporarily using an old Logitech PS/2 cordless keyboard and a
Logitech
PS/2 wired mouse until I have the system up and running.
The keyboard works ok. Haven't progressed to a level where a mouse can
be used so I don't yet know if it is ok.
BTW, I'm using component OUT from the ATI video card to the TV and
that works ok.
I adjusted the TV so that I can see everything (including the
instruction bar at the bottom) I'm
supposed to see.

The XP Pro SP2 install went without a hitch. BIOS and XP saw my
drives, no SATA driver floppy needed, I formatted C: during the
install, installed XP and formatted/partitioned the rest later.

Both systems' BIOS settings are identical and its the same bios
version (as shipped).
SATA1 and SATA2 are enabled.
RAID is disabled since I have no desire to run a RAID array.

I had altered the BIOS for the MCE2005 system to use S3 suspend only
but that was the only change.
When I encounterd the problem I changed it back to agree with the XP
Pro BIOS. This wasn't related to the glitch.

If I skip the F6 3rd party driver option as before, the MCE2005
install loads its files but stops at the
blue "Starting WindowsXP" screen. No disk activity.

I tried every flavour of SATA drivers available from Asus' Make Disk
utils.
When I F6, the drivers are taken, loaded but I still get to the same
blue "Starting WindowsXP" screen.
No disk activity.

I also copied the latest nForce SATA drivers (nForce4_16_6.85) from
the XP Pro C: drive. No go.
I combined SATA_IDE and SATA_RAID drivers onto another floppy. Still
no joy.
I was careful to copy files to the root directory of the floppies.

Where I encountered a listing of more than one set of drivers being
available from the F6 routine, I made sure that both would be loaded.

I switched SATA1/2 connections in case there was a problem with the
HDD it was attempting to installed to but got the same result.

The page I get to ... "Setup is starting WindowsXP", makes no sense.
At that point there is no Windows to start.
I'm expecting the page where I create (partition/format) a C: to
extract windows files from the Disc 1 I'm booting to.

Is there something else I should try?

TIA,

You can not install an MCE system on top of, or as an upgrade to, or in the
same partition of another XP installation. It mcut be installed in a newly
formatted partiion of its own.
Also be sure and install the most current AMD XP X2 driver from the AMD
website since the one on your MCE 2005 install CD may be out of date.