Severe Xp Crash, Can't Even Format

I was referred to this site by someone who swears by it. However, since he couldn't answer it, I am getting scared! I've posted this on usenet and annoyances.com and nobody seems to want to touch it, so please let me know if you want more info. I was reinstalling XP Pro using .cab files on my HDD. Everything was going smoothly until I got some blue screen of death (with error messages across the top that change each time I tried). On reboots, I am given two options, startup normally or go back to setup. If I try and startup, I get an immediate error saying the install is corrupted. If I go to setup, and try and reinstall, it tells me it cannot and to use the CD. The CD is scratched to hell and does not work. So, I give up and reluctantly try to format using my Win98 CD. The format takes 2 seconds. I am suspicious. I run Fdisk and see that I have one 37gig drive and a "Fat16" 8 meg drive. No matter what I do, I cannot get it to format (and then use) my main partition, even after I set it as active. Please help, I am going crazy Thank you

I would purchase wipe drive and completely wipe the drive and then attempt a clean install. I offer this since you are already trying to reformat. As for your scratched cd the only suggestion if it wont read is see if there is a cd repair kit available. I do believe there is a product on the market.