Hello and welcome to Syschat

What is the brand and model number of the CD ROM drive?

You could try booting from an XP Boot Disk floppy and select the one that says "Start with CD ROM support" and then insert the disk and type in the drive letter and then setup

ie D:\setup

It may just be that ur CD ROM isnt working in DOS mode correctly, but the XP Boot Disk has a generic CD ROM driver.

Good luck and let us know how you get on!