We've had quite a few readers asking why their Windows XP installation fails at a certain point -- often never resuming from a scheduled restart during installation.

I've had the same problem actually. In my case,I think its due to a damaged boot sector. My MBR (Master Boot Record) is messed up due to bad sectors on my disk..could probably be one reason.
Perhaps people could try completely formatting their partition before installing..or try from a different installation source.