Cannot create XP partition

Hello,

I'm new to the forum and just had a quick question. I just got all brand new components for my computer today (motherboard, processor, RAM, etc...) except for the IDE hard drive. Once I got everything hooked up and powered on for the first time I did a fresh install of XP on the old hard drive.

I fully updated my computer via Windows Update and and loaded all the new drivers and everything was working fine for about two hours. All of a sudden the computer rebooted itself and kept giving me the "Reboot and select proper boot device or insert boot media in selected boot device" error. I was able to get XP to run by putting in the installation CD and rebooting and not pressing anything when it said "Press any key to boot from CD". That only worked a few times until it would just go straight to the installation screen with the CD being in the drive.

Now here is the problem: When I go back and try to make another fresh copy of XP, it won't let me. I get to the hard drive partition screen and it shows no previous Windows partitions and everything is listed as "unpartitioned space". So I tried to create a new partition and after I entered the size of the partition I wanted and hit enter, it went back to the partition screen but no new partition was created.

I've never had this happen before even after formatting 50+ drives throughout my schooling. Anyone have any ideas??

P.S. Here are my system specs:
Asus P5Q Deluxe Motherboard
Intel Core 2 Duo E8400 Processor
4GB Corsair PC6400 DDR2 RAM
HIS Radeon 4670 1GB Video Card

Have you checked your BIOS settings? With a brand new machine assembled, sometimes the default BIOS settings are wrong for your components. Things like which drives are connected and detected properly on which ports, what the boot sequence is, etc. But even before those, you should check what it is doing for the CPU and RAM voltages against the parts makers' specs. I've seen lots of stories here that required small adjustments to those. Then run some hardware checkers before getting into OS installations. Download and run Memtest 86+ for RAM (let it run all tests repeatedly overnight). Also look for a CPU checker and system checker that will verify that basic components are working properly. Only when those tests show everything working right do you proceed to installing your OS on the hard drive.