I was wondering if anybody had any ideas that could help.I am trying to reinstall windows xp pro. I changed the BIOS to boot from cd-rom, and when the computer restarts it says "booting from cd-rom" and then it says "failure", and continues starting my windows as usual.

Ouch, that doesn't sound very good.

You have to press 'any key' (spacebar) for it to boot from the disk. That said, I've never seen the 'failure' message before. I would guess that your CD is not actually a 'bootable' CD. Do you have any other boot CDs you could try?

You have to troubleshoot the hardware one at a time. Be sure the cables of your cd-rom is working and at the right slot.(secondary master or slave) Next is check your cd-rom player itself. Sometimes it is the player come defective. Third is the installer cd. Try it playing to other player, if it is still readable. Then go on the rest of the hardware and even configuration for checking.