Suggestions

Your CDROM drive may have a dirty lens.  Get a cleaner kit for it.  Or it may be failing.  Borrow another drive and try that one out.

"then i tried to format using the fdisk command " - can't be done - fdisk sets the partitions & FAT tbls, making one the active partition

Run fdisk, then format (fat32 or ntfs?), using ME bootdisk, then reboot & try to install XP.
http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=255867

I already set the partition using fdisk...then rebooted with a boot disk and formated c: this said it was 100% complete...then i rebooted and try to install xp and said it could not load the files..

It definitely sounds like a problem with either the CD drive (as dbrunton suggested) or your CDs. Make sure your discs are clean and not scratched. If that is the case, try copying the files from the CD to your hard drive and installing from there. That way, you can retry any files that don't copy without having to restart setup.

If certain files refuse to copy, it's probably the disc. Make sure when you clean your discs that you wipe them from the center out, and not in a circular motion. If many files continually fail beyond a certain point, the drive's head may be out of alignment. If files seem to fail at random, it's probably a dirty lens like dbrunton said. Try some other discs to narrow down your problem.

Good Luck!

Another problem can be the IDE circuit in the motherboard. I would still check the other options before since they are more likley and cheaper to correct. If it is so that you by any chance have a add-in board with an IDE channel you could try to use that for your CD and HD as a temporary thing to see if it works.

Some systems that need better buffering or double buffering have these types of problems but work find when loaded from the hard drive.  
From DOS enter the following:
   MD  C:\WINMECD
   XCOPY  /E  /V  <CD_drive>:\*.*  C:\WINMECD
   C:
   CD  \WINMECD
   SETUP

Now if the xcopy fails you can be sure it's the CD hardware or driver, or bad RAM.
Once the xcopy finishes you can pull the ME CD out, you're loading entirely from the hard drive.  

If this works, you don't necessarily have a bad CD ROM.  Some of the windows load routines have short timeout values and simply can't wait for transfers through slower CD ROMS.   It WILL be worth your while to check the CD manufacturer's web sight for updated drivers after ME is up and running.  Also check to see if they recommend double-buffering or specific value in the x= block for emm386.exe.  


Good Luck

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K_2K,

He reformatted the HD and is loading Windows XP from the CD (which would mean a clean install).  There is no Config.sys to load HIMEM.SYS or EMM386.EXE from!

Webster

Carl,

Yes,  i see.  And he's tried other things.  

As i said,  If they're not there, put em at the top.  ME doesn't need Config.sys unless it needs it, so yes,  if not there put it there.

Thanks for clarifying.

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Thanks you guys for all your help. Well I changed the cd-rom drive...nothing...reseated RAM...nothing...Put in another stick of RAM...SETUP WORKED!! THANK YOU!!

MELISSA-

What is this "Assisted Answer" Stuff?

Never seen it before!

Craig

Assist was designed to say "I needed information from both posts to solve my problem."  ie, "they assisted each other" in helping me find my answer.

If her problems were reduced by changing RAM, and then went away after changing x=???? in her memory manager,  she needed both answers.  

However, if the ONLY thing she did was change RAM, then my answer helped nothing more than Craig's.  Melissa would likely award him all possible points, as he was first to identify what she needed - no further posts were needed to get an answer.

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