Need help with XP reinstall

A friends’ machine loaded with XP would not boot in any mode; each time would come up with the blue screen of death “UNMOUNTABLE_BOOT_DRIVE”.

I tried reinstalling XP on this machine, and received this fatal error at 39% complete:

SXS.DLL: Syntax Error in manifest or policy file “F:\I386\asms\6000\MSFT\WINDOWS\COMMON\CONTROLS\CONTROLS.MAN on line 0. Installation failed: F:\I386\asms.
Error msg. Manifest Parse error; Invalid at the top level of the document.

I tried to install XP again, but each time I would get the same fatal error message.

Anyone know what’s causing this or am I doing something wrong?