Windows XP Pro Installation

Hello,
A friend of mine has a 1 Ghz computer with 256 mb of ram. He had a 15 GB hard drive that recently died and had windows 98. He bought a new hard drive and a windows xp installation disk. For some reason whenever I start up his computer windows starts to load and goes to a screen with with a white status bar, then freezes there. Does it sound like a problem with the bios or some other hardware problem. It is a homemade computer. Thanks