Installing Windows XP Pro onto new hard drive.

My Hard drive recently had a melt down and despite having Norton Save & Restore, I was unable to recover it. I bought a new drive and tried to install Windows XP Pro onto it. But it comes up with not valid or the setup not being able to read the CD. Then I tried installing Windows 98 first, hoping to install XP on top, but it states that Windows 98 comes up with the same, although it does boot in safe mode. But it disables the CD Drives. I’ve tried several ways to boot from either CD-ROM. But cannot get past the invalid Windows CD despite having legitimate copies of both. Has anyone any suggestions?