Failure to upgrade WinXP to Win7, total comp fail

What seemed as a quick and easy upgrade of my friends pc has quickly turned into a disastrous mistake, any ideas / help would be appreciated.
So, basically, my friend has windows XP (Packard Bell 300GB HDD, 3.5GB RAM, 512MB GFX Card) I tried to upgrade his OS to windows 7 (something I have done a few times before on other computers, reformatting etc.). First thing that took me off balance was the CD wouldn’t boot from start up, however, I was able to start an install by booting it from windows xp “my computer”. Install commenced and all seemed to be going fine, windows 7 was being installed and occasionally restarted by the install. I set up the user details and all was supposedly ready to go after one more restart, so restart it did.
I got to the boot menu where I selected to boot windows 7 however after selecting this the screen went black and cpu restarted itself, starting an infinite loop of restarts before booting windows 7.
I managed to get to the boot menu again where I was able to select previous operating system, most things had been removed though many things were still present (not what id expected, normally when ive done this everything goes and is replaced by new OS), removing the OS from the inside allowed me to boot windows 7 via the boot menu, however the wireless dongle used was unrecognised (drivers missing?) after some exploring on the windows 7 OS it seemed everything was ok (other than the wifi), then randomly the computer crashes, restarts itself and im stuck in the same infinite loop.
re-installing xp didn’t work, crashing quite some way into the installation.
unable to remove windows 7 and install windows xp I hooked the hardrive up to my pc so I could view the hardrive, I formatted it totally wiping it.

I tried re-installing xp, crashing at the same place. I was getting a message at the “boot from CD:…” sayingXE-E61: Media test failure, check cable PXE-M0F:Exiting intel boot agent
This shows twice then the third time is followed by : DISK BOOT FAILURE, INSERT SYSTEM DISK AND PRESS ENTER. I insert my xp disk, press enter, installation begins and ends with a crash on the select partition screen, all the partitions say Unknown device, or something, pressing D to delete does nothing, pressing enter or trying to move selection results in a crash with much text followed by Technical Information: “***STOP: 0x0000008E (0xC0000005, 0xF7419CAD, 0xF6FE97E4, 0x00000000)
***setupdd.sys – Address F7419CAD base at F73ED000, Datestamp 48025277”
After getting this too many times I plugged the HDD back into my PC and extracted the files from disc to HDD hoping booting from HDD might work, it didn’t, hooked it back up to my PC, formatted. I plugged my HDD into his PC, which runs Windows 7, his PC booted with my HDD just fine (aside from some graphical issues).
So I’m left unable to install an Operating System on my friends HDD, any ideas? Ive also tried installing windows 98 which apparently has required drivers for xp, I was unable to install windows 98 also.
If anyone has any ideas, solutions, or questions please don’t hesitate, im really rather stuck and considering buying a new HDD with OS ready installed.

 

I've been able to get past those messages by using my original windows xp disc and pressing enter when requested, unfortunately though the computer crashes during the install, normally when asked to select a partition. pressing any corresponding key results in the computer crashing and restarting. The partition options appear as "unknown drive" or device or something.

BTW, thanks for the response!

 

Hi, further to Tony's good advice and considering even an old Windows 98 wouldn't install so it just may be coincidental, however the hard drive itself may be faulty.
Let us know what happens after trying Tony's suggestions.
Then let us know what make the hard drive is, we can run a makers test on the drive if needed.

Nev.

 

That's what I was reading all the way through is it is the hard drive that is bad.

 

OK, so I took out all the ram, cleaned the computer up abit, stuck in 4 identical ram cards equalling 2GB of ram (4 sticks of 524MB).
I attempted installing windows xp onto the harddrive from a CD as that's what was installed previously.
the CD is accepted and begins to install although as you will see from the pictures the issue occurs at the partition selection.
Pressing any key relating to partition selection creation or deletion results in the crash screen shown in the third picture, the only way to get past this screen is to reboot and begin the process all over again (with the same outcome

 

the HDD is a "Seagate Barracuda 7200.8 300Gbytes"

 

I do worry it may be. Ive plugged my own 1TB hdd in and loaded up fine, I'm rather dubious about purchasing a new HDD due to the fact is what working perfectly fine before. My fears are that when I had plugged it into my comp I may have incorrectly tampered with it in disk management

 

After replacing the ram did you run memtest to make certain the ram is compatible? If not you need to.
I am not sure if you are nervous in writing this post are just jumbling up the numbers as ram sticks are 512 not 524 and there hasn't been a 300 Gb size hard drive for years but 320 is very common. How old is this hard drive. Seagate has a date code on their drives and if you go here it will decode the date for you:
http://www.bugaco.com/calculators/seagate_date_code.php
Walking past the last 2 answers the next step is to thoroughly clean this drive because I am not quite sure what your description of starting the install in Windows My Computer means but if it means what I think it does you need to thoroughly wipe the drive and start again assuming the drive isn't too old for all this.
I would run kill disk on the drive after copying out any files and data you need:
http://www.killdisk.com/downloadfree.htm

 

Yes all the RAM is compatible, its the same sticks of RAM that were originally installed before a minor upgrade (replacing one 512mb stick with a 2GB stick), the computer was still running fine after the ram upgrade, ti was only after attempting to upgrade OS that he issue occurred. Sorry yes I did mean 4 sticks of 512MB not 524mb.
HDD says 300GB on it the date from that site was 2006-02-18, so yes quite aged.
I had already formatted the drive in disk management by hooking it up to another computer, I also removed a partition and increased volume size through the same means..

By starting the install in Windows My Computer I meant I had loaded up the WinXP OS while the disc for Win7 was in the DVD drive as I had encountered issues trying to install via boot options. whilst on WinXP I went into "My Computer" and double clicked the Win7 disc to begin installation

 

That is what is wrong, you cannot do that and I am surprised anything happened. Windows XP does not upgrade to Windows 7 and the only thing you can do in Windows is an in place upgrade. Your Disk Management format means nothing. It can't do the entire drive. Kill Disk is a low level format that cleans the entire drive but with a 2006 hard drive, time to pitch it and buy new that is way too old to do a new install of any version of Windows on. Installing Windows to a hard drive is the most stressful thing you will ever do to one and just like floating a rowboat with holes in it in a river will show you all the leaks, so will installing Windows do the same for a hard drive.