cant install windows

I have tried installing several versions of windows and have not had any success. This has happened on 2 seperate machines. I have changed all devices and have gone back to just a display card in both without success. I have followed the directions in the setup.txt file (CAB section) and still no success. the Q is could this be a boot virus, bios virus. The first machine was not mine and I put the hdd into mine to get a critical data off and approximately 2 weeks later my sysem was hanging and then would come back, mouse would hang or lock but keyboard was still operational and other times the system would freeze. winME would only get to 8% (creation of startup disk) xp would get to 6% install but when I double the ram i got to 18% install, if the first machine had a boot virus could it be transferred to the second machine that was used to get the data. I have fdisk both machines and also the mbr and still could not get an O/S on.