Windows xp won't install

I have searched many forums and am completely stuck. A friend of mine decided that he wanted to take the upgrade from windows xp to vista on an ACER Aspire 5100 machine. After the install of windows vista he was not able to use any of his usb ports. We fooled around on it for a long time and then decided that it was not worth the time.

After six months I decided that maybe there was new support out there so i should try again so i can have the computer. Anyways I updated the computer fully and installed all of the software and drivers supplied by ACER. Nothing seemed to make the difference. I tried windows 7 (although not supported) and had no better luck. I updated the bios, searched for hours on fixes and was stuck. Did a memory test (all ok).

I decided that maybe I should try and reinstall windows xp to see if there is just not the proper support for vista. Trying to reinstall windows xp media center edition but everytime i get stuck on "setup is starting windows". I let it run for hours but it never changes and had to do a hard reboot to get it unfrozen.

I am wondering if something could be tieing all of my problems together (usb and not being able to install xp) or after updating to windows is there hardware "software" that is too new for xp? Wouldn't all of the drivers be erased with a clean install?

Please help.

 

Of course you installed XP without any USB device plugged to your PC.. right ?

 

I have tried several times to install xp and do not remember in what order but on one attempt I had a flash drive in the rear usb. I only remembered it was there when I read one forum on microsoft pages that said mass storage could cause computer to hang. I remembered that I had left it plugged in and I have tried several times since never with any usb devices installed.