OS Upgrade Win. ME to XP Failure!

I have experienced failure in running both the XP Home Up Grade and the XP Upgrade Advisor. My present Win. ME seems to be working ok, however, the Upgrade Advisor stalls at "Processing System Files..... DVD Movie Player" each time I run it. No error message given, also no .txt report recorded. The XP Upgrade disk contains a similar tool, it stalls at the same exact location, no message, no report. When proceeding to install XP Upgrade it get to a point indicating about 75 minutes remaining and also stalls, no error message indicated. I have let the computer run in this stalled condition several times from one to up to three hours.
I have been on the phone with Microsoft Support for about two hours. They had me uninstall all CD burning software, Norton Antivirus, and remove all connections except the monitor, mouse, and keyboard. The exact problem remains. Another Microsoft tech was to call me back but has not so far. I do not want to reformat drive C, as a possible but drastic cure. My computer is a Dell 4100 with plenty of RAM. HELP PLEASE!

 

It's never a good idea to upgrade in my opinion, you basically compound one problem on top of another. Even though it may be a pain, backing up your stuff and installing xp fresh is much better, you'll run into far fewer problems with the os in the future.