Quote Originally Posted by green91
Ah, you've got to boot from the disc. Put the disc in the drive, reboot. If it starts windows and not the install program, you may need to change the boot driver order in your BIOS. A fresh boot from the XP install disc will allow you to format the drive and do a clean install.
make sure to do what he says b/c if you don't delete/create new partitions and format windows typically will overwrite or leave old windows directories on your install.

definately just delete partition, create new partition, then do Quick NTFS (save you some time) you should be done in about 1-1.5 hours from start to finish