Need help reformatting xp

Hi ive been having trouble booting windows xp when ever i get to the boot screen you know the whole "press any key to boot from cd" or whatever after i press a key the three dots move and stall and it never loads any further.

Its my friends computer, he told me all of a sudden his computer needed a password to login he didnt put a password and it was after he uploaded a new adobe product didnt really get into it. anyways administrator with nothing for password didnt work.

thats when i decided to reformat but low and behold it stalls... ive tried using a different hard drive to avail checking ram to see if it works it seems to be fine. i cant think of what to do next. it seems to be hardware related but i dont know what it is.