help needed quickly!!!!

[bigblair]

my friends computer was running for months without an anti virus, so i installed AVG and ran it, it found thousands of corrupted files, it deleted them and his computer failed to start, even in safe mode, so he then tried to reinstall XP, but that seemed to crash and now it fails to open in safe mode, and wont let him reinstall XP,
when you put computer on it goes thru the usual motions then just after the XP screen it goes black and says Floppy Diskette Search Error press F1 for continue and F2 for set up, now his computer doesnt have a floopy drive, i have an valuation copy of XP i am lending him till he ges the chance to get vista, i dont understand why his computer is doing this, any help would be great, i have run a hardware test, hardware is working fine

[bigblair]

also it wont let me just simply put in the xp or vista disk and install it,

[the100thmonkey]

It sounds like the install process wasn't completed last time, which is why it starts searching for a disk after displaying the XP splash screen.

You're selecting the optical drive to boot from with the XP disc in the drive, right?

Usually you have to either change the boot order in the BIOS or you have to hit a key like F2 or F11 when you firs turn the PC on, then select the optical drive to do the install.

[bigblair]

i have changed the boot order, so that i doesnt look for a floppy disk

[the100thmonkey]

Have you told it to boot from CD?

[bigblair]

yeah, ive told it to boot from CD

[Tom]

If you don't get it sorted and the XP CD is genuine, you could consider Asking Microsoft to see if they know what the hell is going on.

[Braggy]

A little idea:
You could try taking the HDD out of the computer that wont boot, putting it in a working specamin as a slave. Formatting it compltly from there.

Then try running the O/s Installation?