xp crashing help with diagnosing

[brightond]

I just set up a new computer to run audio recording/editing software. I installed xp, did some optimizing based on several good guides found from google, and had all of my 2 important drivers loaded correctly (video and sound.) The problem may lie with the audio interface. It is a usb interface which communicates with the audio softwares asio drivers. Upon the first load of the software the computer froze and crashed. The second time I opened task manager to track the cpu performance and saw a huge spuike in usage, it hung at 100 and shut down again. I then tried opening a smaller program (adobe reader.) It's opening also caused a huge spike in usage (90's) but dropped down to 1 or two relatively quickly. I decided to turn the usb interface off and load the music software again. This time it spiked high but dropped down like adobe. Unfortunately the software is useless without the audio interface to communicate with. I checked for IRQ conflicts and they were all reported as OK. Also, part of the optimizing xp for a digital audio workstation, I hit the F5 button instead of the F6 button after the first reboot of the xp install and selected "normal computer" to avoid IRQ conflicts that are known to occur in xp.
I should also mention that the computer is not connected to the internet and has only brought a couple files over from the other computer which does run a firewall with Norton.
My question is this. Can I take this hard drive with xp installed on it and put it in an older computer (not totally outdated) and load windows. Reinstall drivers if necassary and test the same opening of programs. I just want to make sure it's a software/hardrive isuue and not a cpu/memory/motherboard issue.
Thanks

 

[brightond]

I aslo get a windows error message when the computer restarts. I can't send it because I'm not connected.

In the technical log the two files being sent are....

C:\WINDOWS\Minidump\Mini010506-01.dmp
C:\DocumentsandSettings\Name\Locals~1\Temp\WER1.tmp.dir00\sysdata.xml

Mean anything?

 

[wozelbeak]

no, you cant move the hdd. windows will recognise that it is in a different machine and refuse to work.
it would help if you posted the full pecs on your p.c.woz

 

[brightond]

Sure, It's an ASRock motherboard with a 2.7ghz celeron processor. It has a radeon7000 graphics card (AGP) and 512 mb SDRAM. My hard drive is 160gb maxtor. The only audio device is the external usb interface. Anymore specs?