Windows Reinstall Errors

A friend of mine was having difficulty with his pc, it is a Comcrap running Windows ME and had been hit with a number of viruses etc in the past, so he kindly asked me to take a look at it, which i have done...

I started by formatting his hard drive, in order to clean the pc completely and to install Windows XP Pro.

I started by using FDisk to delete and format the hard disk
I then placed the XP CD in the drive and using the utility within it installed 3 partitons and installed XP onto C.

After the inital install where xp says remove any disks in the drive and prepare for reboot the pc stops and after every ctrl alt delete the pc freezes on a window with a white blinking _

I have tried to reformat several times without success

here are a few codes I have got during some of the installs
_____________________________________
163-Time and date not set

>> I went into BIOS and set the time/date


C:\>dir
cdr101: not ready reading c
abort retry failed

>> no clue


multi(0)disk(o)rdisk(0)partition(1)
NTLDR = couldnt open drive, multi(0)disk(o)rdisk(0)partition(1)

>> no clue

I have also tried the IDE DPS Self-test which can be found within the BIOS setup

>> that freezes on the SECOND TEST


Can anyone help or offer advice...

 

First, if you're trying to install XP don't use fdisk to format the drive, let the Windows XP setup program format it for you.
Second, when you see the prompt to remove any disks in the drive, it is referring to the A (floppy) drive, not the cd rom drive, leave the XP cd in because it needs it after the reboot to continue the installation.
The "cdr101: not ready reading c" doesn't make too much sense, this is an error generally produced when it can't read from the cd, but you indicate it is saying C ?

I hope this helps out.