The hard drive does have a second partition that contains Compaq stuff. I'd really rather not format it though because I unfortunately backed up some addtional stuff onto that second partition, thinking the reinstallation would go off without a hitch. I don't think that's the cause as it still happens even when I swapped out the hard drive for another one that has only one partition. What I'd really like to do now is just get XP installed somehow on to that Compaq, so that I could at least retrieve the backed up stuff.
It's wierd, but I can't seem to get the Compaq's original Maxtor HD to work elsewhere. Tried all sorts of jumper settings and everytime when the BIOS goes and starts trying to find it, it just freezes up on the Maxtor. When I do a full format, it does mention something about the drive being damaged. At first I thought the HD going bad was causing the problem, until I got the same error message even with a different HD.
I thought it could be the CDROMs or the CD, I guess that'll be my next attempts. Thanks for the help so far. This is causing me tons of stress because it's a customer's computer and 1. I didn't back up that stuff that was on the 2nd partition to a CDR like I SHOULD have and 2. the computer actually worked somewhat before the format, and now it doesn't work at all and they have nothing.