Friends computer was super slow so she bought 2gb to replace the 256 it had. Made sure to get same type of ram. Computer was still slow, so she asked me to reformat/reinstall. Ok cool, during xp install it will reformat and copy files, but it when it reboots to go into the next stage of xp install (the part where you enter serial, it just goes back to the blue screen (first part of the xp install) If i pull the cd, it just errors out obviously. Anyone have any ideas? this is a new one. I have tried xp pro - her copy, and a copy of home i had lying around now, both do the same thing.

Have you tried pulling the CD when it reboots (ie, so second phase starts with no CD). It shouldn't error, it should ask for the CD - it sounds like it may be automatically booting from CD without you pressing a key. Also - look in bios (usually Del or F2 key to access - should tell you on screen) to see if bios antivirus feature is enabled - if it is, then disable it and try again. If no good, read on. So you're doing a clean install (ie, during first phase you either removed & recreated or formatted the windows partition)? If so, then almost certainly you have a hardware issue - and would suspect the new RAM. Is it one stick or two? If two, try with each on its own. If one, try with the 256.