Stuck in XP Reformat - Did I Make a Brick?

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I have a Dell Inspiron E1705 laptop that was running REALLY slow... so after reading the tutorial on this site, "How to reformat your hard drive and install/reinstall Windows," I decided to take the plunge and start from scratch. I booted with the XP DVD that came with the new computer and followed the steps. The tutorial is great-- I was able to do everything it said.

Until now. XP is trying to install itself-- it's on the "Installing Windows" screen. The good news is that the screen says the "Setup will complete in approximately 33 minutes." The bad news is it has said that for almost 2 hours! I'm going to leave it on overnight, but does this indicate some sort of major problem?

Assuming the screen stays that way forever, what should I do? Thanks in advance for any advice.
 
It's getting worse!

Update-- after sitting ALL NIGHT the install is still stuck at "33 minutes left."

Help! What do I do? I'm afraid to shut it off, but figure I have no other options?
 
i have restarted my PC mid install with no problems... you dont really have a choice unfortunately.

make sure you keep your windows cd in when you reboot and make sure it boots from cd drive before HDD and it should simply resume installation. (i had a power outage and it continued to install fine for me.)
 
I ended up restarting the install a number of times, but every time it hung up at 33 minutes-- would never progress beyond that point. Luckily my machine is still under warranty. Dell is shipping me a new hard drive on the assumption that was the problem. Who knows... but it seemed a reasonable response.
 
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