Alright, so I'll break this down- I bought a used Intel Core 2 Quad Q8300 and an MSI P6NGM-L motherboard (from 2 different sellers) and currently have that paired up with 2 sticks of DDR2 RAM (2gb + 1 gb). I slapped all of it on my test bench and got a straight boot to BIOS, so I decided to go straight ahead and pair it up with my sataIII ssd which has a copy of windows 10 to get into some programs. After no luck getting a loading screen (stuck on blinking underscore), i decided to do a clean install of windows on the same ssd from a usb 2.0 flashdrive. I get past the blinking underscore, but am left with the windows 10 logo and that stays up for as long as the computer stays on. I can't get anything past this, however i've done multiple windows installs on the same flashdrive and ssd. I'm stumped. Any ideas?
Also note that I've set the boot order to all different orders, didn't solve anything...
Have you tried installing a different version of Windows or Linux? That would be your next step to see if anything at all will boot from the system. Next try a different SATA drive and flash drive to see if either one of those hardware pieces are to blame. Hope this helps!
I think W10 doesen't have the SATA drivers for legacy devices but only for AHCI and RAID. Check if the SATA controller is in legacy mode and switch to AHCI (I think you should be able to do it). After that you can install W10 and the system should boot with ease. I don't think it's a problem with W10 being 64-bit because the machine is able to execute 64-bit instructions.
Before installing, disconnect the power cable of all drives but the one you're going to install Windows 10 on. After installation, boot into the fresh installation of Windows, do the OS updates until there are no more. (This will most likely include several reboots.)
I'd say the first step should be to test a live disto of linux on your flash drive. That way you would know if the hardware even works or not. Then you can worry about SSD / OS compatibility issues after.
Think that's you culprit, Windows is bad for older hardware. Id try a linux distro and see what happens and if it works maybe try windows again. Atleast to sort out hardware faults.
Finally figured out what was causing the issue, although have no idea why it was doing it. I decided to swap out the Q8300 for a Pentium D 945, and everything works flawlessly. No stutter, internet both wired and wireless works fine, everything is okay. Any explanation for this? Also since I plan on getting another quad core to replace the speculated faulty Q8300, any CPUs I should avoid?
It could be an issue still with Windows drivers, I think. Also, see if there is a BIOS update for the motherboard. The Q8300 may not be supported in the BIOS version you are using.
EDIT: I would still try the Linux live usb. If it works, you will know the cpu is supported in BIOS.