The most likely problem is that you have some hardware not supported by SP2 and this is causing the problem. Try looking at the Optical Drives and particularly CD Burners if you have one.
As for SP2 failing to remove itself properly that's common particularly when it hits a hardware problem so it trashes th OS Completely. The proper way to proceed from this is to wipe the drive with a utility that writes zero's to every sector and then perform a clean install. You can use something like Boot & Nuke to achieve this and it's available for download from here
http://tinyurl.com/4rfur
Flashing the BIOS may make some difference as well depending on the BIOS Version that you have so look up what's available for your M'Board from Biostar.
Or if you are worried you can buy a replacement BIOS Chip with the latest BIOS Version available on it and just change the BIOS Chip over. This place sells BIOS Chips and offers an excellent service but you have to order the correct thing in the first place.
http://tinyurl.com/n2sgx
As for needing SP2 well if you want support for any new problems from M$ you do need SP2 and WGA as M$ no longer offers any new support for XP SP1 or lower.
You could also contact Biostar to find out if there are any known issues with your M'Board and SP2 though I very much doubt it and I wouldn't bother attempting to contact M$ for help as the last time that I did I was asked to ring them back when I had found the problem and worked out a solution and that was for SP1 for XP.
Though if you have retained some parts that did work with SP2 previously you can forget those as possible suspects and only look at any replacement parts that you have fitted as the culprits. It may also be a driver for something that is causing the problem so if you have a CD of SP2 it may be worth a try to run that after you initially install XP and before you apply any drivers and the like just to see if the system installs properly. If it does you can then set about installing the various drivers and software and see if you get any problems.
When you have problems like this it's better to Clone the Drive with a Cloning Utility so you can recover fast and don't need to go through the entire process of installing again if you have one. Personally I like Ghost as I use it quite a lot but there are many other Cloning Utilities available that will do a similar job. If you clone and have a failure remember to wipe the drive before attempting to reapply the clone and start again.
Col
