Formatt Gone Wrong.

Okay here's the story, maybe a lot of reading but it's best to explain from the start.

I have just brought a new PC. Runs fantastic, but back to the matter at hand, the old PC i was going to give to my Mother in Law, so went to give it a formatt before passing it on.
I've formatted this PC using the restore disk...Countless times over the past 3 or 4 years. It uses some ghost program or something to do this format and will normally just wipe, then install windows no problem.

I took the harddrive out to clean the case, put it back in. Then went for the formatt, everything is plugged in correctly, no lose wires, and all exactly to factory settings, the BIOS is set to "Restore to defaults" the only thing i have remembered since coming to work today is the CPU is at 105% not 100% from when my brother tried learning to O/C...Rather badly. The only thing i forgot to fix back, I will reset that to 100% tonight and try again but i don't think that'll be the problem.


The problem is now when i try to format, the drive seems to formatt fine, then tells me to take the disk out and restart for it to install windows blah blah.
Then the problem occurs, often it'll just reset through loading up, once it actually installed half of windows then reset, and another time it installed windows, when i went to go on it, decided to tell me that the installation wasn't a full install and please re-install. i don't have an individual windows disk, (For XP at least) just this recovery disk.

What could this problem be? I don't understand as i've done it the same as this so many times and had no problems, i tried an old hard drive and that just didn't work at all. Wouldn't even formatt the drive.


I need this PC done as i've promise the mother in law, and we all know how hard they are to please

Any ideas?



--- Edit ---

I forgot, this is an Emachines system using Windows XP original.
1x 1024mb DDR 1x 256mb DDRm
80GB Hard drive.
Pentium 4 processor.
Geforce 4200.
350w PSU
Standard case cooling etc.
Never had any real problems before.

 

I'm thinking it's a problem with the cd or cd drive. It's hard to tell which one at the moment.
How bad of shape is the cd in? Scratches and dirt/dust can cause this problem. If the cd looks to be in good shape (not all deformities are easily seen, btw), the cd drive may be shot and isn't reading the disk correctly.

 

If the machine originally came with the 256 stick of RAM take out the other one until you have completed the reinstallation.

If this doesn't work then you will have to find a way to copy the CD to hard drive and install from there, perhaps slave it to your new pc?