BSOD on anything

My buddy had a no-power on condition with his comp not long ago, and it looked like the psu was dead. So i changed that, and came to discover no power was making it though the mobo, and he replaced it with a ECS 848P-A (he needed cheap).

Now it loads but when you go into windows or try and boot from a windows CD to install a new copy, its BSOD. All the time, right after it says loading IDE (hdd) or loading from cdrom.

Any ideas? I thought an IDE cable when i first saw it bsod after loading the hdd, but both ides gone bad?

It's a P4 2.4GHZ/512MB DDR ram/Winxp

He doesnt know what caused the original problem so im at a loss. Ideas?

Sounds like bad ram, what does the stop message say?

Dont know he has to go home and check, ill probably find out. If i knew id know the prob LOL. Ram was my thoughts also but im hoping for his sake its cheap.