Computer Monitor Problems

I stole one of my parents old computers in which the hard dive broke, bought a new hard drive for it and am now trying to get it working... I just installed XP and it worked fine with this old crappy monitor, then I took it to a different room and tried it with a different monitor (I did this because this room has the router in it) and it works with the initial loading screen, but once it starts loading windows the display cuts out. computer is still on and appears to be running... I then tried it with the old monitor in the new room and it does the same thing...

I'm now working on re-installing windows, but has anyone seen or heard of this problem before? it is definitely a new one to me... my guess was that there was no driver for the monitor I had installed... but it doesn't seam like quite the right explanation... hopefully it works after I am done installing windows again...

 

I tried that but I couldn't remember how to get to safe mode being a mac junkie now but from what I remember the option comes up after the part where I can see things on the monitor, lol

either way, I am done installing the OS again, and its working now, but it is in 4 bit color mode with something like 400 x 600 resolution and it wont let me change it, I tried going in and messing with the drivers, but it seams like the computer wont let me change them... I can probably get around it somehow... but I need to figure out how...