initial boot up errors / memory issues

[Dynasty231]

Bought a computer kit for my 14-year-old son and we put it together. But we're having a hard time getting it to boot up. It's frozen on the first screen, where it says "Press DEL for setup." Other times (after powering down, then up again), it's frozen on the BIOS setup utility screen. We first tried loading the beta for Windows 7, and got messages like "could not find kernel" and "bad hard drive/cd burner." We then tried loading Ubuntu, and got a crc error.

This kit has 4 x 2GB DDR RAM strips. We did the Ubuntu memory test, and they failed miserably. We then tried using installing two strips at a time, and they still failed. Any thoughts on what to do?

[DealerMan]

I'm having a similar issue. I have an ancient 1.5 P4 box with what I was told is brand-new 168-pin memory. I can get the CD to load, but once the progress bar gets to 100%, it simply goes to a black screen. I'm attempting to diagnose what it could be, through BIOS settings and Google/Ubuntu searches. Bear with me.