Trouble Installing

I just built my first custom computer and finished installing XP, but it was a wild ride to get there. First, I tried installing a friend's XP home and I kept getting a BSOD while trying to install. So, I decided to head over and get a pirated copy of XP pro as a torrent and burned the .iso to a disc. I tried installing it with that disc and it would get partway through and give me the same BSOD. I think the error message was 6F, 'Failure to Initialize Session 3'. Finally, on my third try, it worked and installed properly. It has not had any problems and I was able to validate it and everything is perfect now. I am thinking about buying another WD Velociraptor to put in RAID 0 and I understand that means reinstalling the whole OS. I would like to troubleshoot what was going wrong on my first install so I don't have to worry with this second one. Here are my system specs, let me know if you need anything else. Thanks everyone.

CASE: CM 690
MOBO: ASRock P43Twins1600
CPU: e8400 @ stock 3.0
RAM: 4 gb (2X@gB) Showing @ 3.2 in XP
GPX: ATI Radeon 4870 512 GB
Snd: Creative P.O.S.
HSF: Zalman CP9500
PS: Xeon 600W Modular w/ 140mm fan

Optical Drives: Not sure exactly, but I pulled them out of my old Dell, I suspect maybe they are the problem. They are both IDE, master is the DVD-ROM I used to install, slave is a DVD-R/W. I have not tried getting a new drive, but I totally understand if that should be my first step.

Thanks in Advance

P.S. My friend used this same Pirated XP disc and had a similar result, first few tries, nada, thrid try...bingo, but his rig is a P.O.S., so it could be anything.