Reinstalling XP on a Dell laptop

[Sheaf Saint]

Some help please guys...

 

A mate asked me to help him wipe his dell laptop and reinstall XP so yesterday I did just that, using the XP disk that came with his laptop. I have done this loads of times before on various machines so didn't envisage any problems.

 

Anyway, after following the normal procedure: deleting existing partitions, formating in NTFS and running windows setup; after it finished copying all the files, I expected it to set up Windows as normal, ie - go through the usual configuration routine. But when the computer re-booted it just went back to the delete/create partition screen again. when I tried to start the setup again, it tells me that I am trying to install Windows on a partiton that already has an OS on it and do I wish to continue, but when I exit it tells me that setup is not complete, and when I change the boot sequence back to HDD as first boot device it can't recognise a valid OS.

 

Any ideas?