winxp won't finish install

[jedshow]

I just built my first pc. I completed an install of winxp and decided to play around a bit-for no other reason than curiosity, I reformatted the hard drive with winxp on it. When trying to install winxp again, and again and again, only part of the install completes. When the computer reboots to finish the install after setting everything up for the install and partitioning the drive and copying files to the installation folders, it doesn't boot past the press any key to boot from cd screen-I don't press a key because I don't want to boot from the cd at this point. When I change the boot drive order making the hard drive the primary boot drive, the pc finds the boot drive but then won't boot any further than a black screen with a flashing dash in the upper left corner. Does anybody have any ideas? Does this sound like a hard drive problem? Any help is greatly appreciated. I enjoyed building this pc and need to figure out what the problem is. Thanks!

[Force Flow]

Welcome to PCMech, jedshow

Try cleaning the CD. You may also want to try a zero fill on the drive and try starting the install again.

[yellohut]

do a full format of the drive.. and try installing from a different cd rom drive..
you may also want to try removing all but the necissary peripherals and installing that way. (use just the mobo, hard drive, cpu, memory, cd rom and graphics card... no NIC or modem or TV tuner or things of that nature)

[jedshow]

Thanks Force Flow and yellohut! I'm not quite sure what solved the problem. I started from scratch. I took the pc apart and went step by step through the mobo setup guide. Everything seems to be working now. I appreciate your time. Thanks again.