Trouble installing XP on Compaq Laptop

So I acquired a Presario 700 laptop from a client, its incredibly sweet, Athlon 4 1.0ghz with plenty of ram, but it was incredibly unstable with XP home as it would blue-screen constantly. I borrowed my friend's Windows XP Professional cd (real thing not copy) and decided I would install it. When I go into setup it can't find like 5 of the files saying that they aren't located on the disk. How is this possible, this disc has not one scratch on it! Anyways, this will be my 6th trying to install XP and usually it will finish all the files and then restart and go into setup but before it said Fatal Error, and last time it said 'not enough virtual memory' and would restart. This is incredibly aggrevating. Any help would be appreciated!

IMHO perhaps the CD-Drive is unable to read the CD..such XP issues might be due to incompatibillity reasons. Try installing it in safe mode. Also disable the "System BIOS Cacheable" and the C000, 32k Shadow" features if they are available.

ok whoa whoa, where are these settings? There is no OS currently on the computer so I dont think I can install in Safe-mode

Real time in the IRC chan is better than this...

Ok, something that I've realized is that the files that it says it cannot find is not consistent at all. Sometimes it will find files it found the time before, and the ones it didn't find before it will find this time. Does that make this a CDROM problem?

Can you browse for the file? I had to do that before when installing a driver.

No, I cannot browse.

it does sound like a CD rom problem. the only other thing I can think of to try is setting the bios to fail safe defaults this probably wont solve anything but it is worth a shot.

What if I loaded those 6 floppy disks...would that make it any better?

that would boot the computer but you still have to be able to load the OS off the CD. know anyone with a usb cd Burner? you could boot off the disk and then load from the usb connected CD burner.( I think, as long as the bios recognizes the Burner)

Hmm...I don't think I do...What I do have is a 'backpack cdrom' the only problem is that I don't have its power supply, so looks like i'll have to look around for one that will work. Anyone know what power supply it uses?

If I recall correctly the back pack was a buslink product. they marketed a back pack Cd rom and a back pack harddrive. office depot used to carry them.

Isn't a "backpack drive" a portable drive? I seem to recall a manufacturer that called their portable drives Backpack CDROM and Backpack Harddrive etc...

yeah the buslink "backpack Cd drives and hard drives were marketed towards laptop owners. they were generall slim and light ( by that times standards). I think they are still around but you dont see them in stores as much as you used to.