I'm working on an e-machine which has a 19gig hd a 1.0 ghz celeron, a cd, and 256 mb PC 100 memory
It sees all this stuff in the bios( this means that its not a hdd,cd,floppy,mem error)

it runs knoppix ( linux on a cd) fine ( this means that its not overheating)
knoppix sees the hard drive too!

When I try to install windows xp, it hangs before it gets to the disk partitioning part (this means its worthless, it needs xp. Linux wasn't of any value)

It also hangs when I try to run data lifguard-cd stops spinning on the created 128mb buffer? On drive C,
partition magic(on a floppy) - stops after it says "loading himem.sys "

and norten antivirus.

what could the problem be?

Have you tried using a boot floppy and going from there ?

Looks like you need to repartition before you try anything more.

Well I tried to install dos, and partition magic off bootable floppies, and I reformatted the hard disk on my xp machine.
Its 19gig in ntfs.

Could this be a mobo prob?

Don't reformat or install PM. Simple create a single DOS partition on the drive using FDISK. Do not format it. Boot to your XP CD and install XP.

What is Fdisk, how do I get it, and will it load?

Do I have to use my working computer to reformat it?

Will it end up being a fat or fat32 partition?

FDISK is a utility to manage partitions. It should be on the boot floppy. If you don't have it you can make a boot floppy at bootdisk.com

Well, As it turns out, the northbridge chipset was broken (the one that communicates with the memory).. So basically it couldn't use certain commands to the memory..

Windows commands, mind you. Thus, you can install linux, but not windows.
I learned this about 3 years ago, and as I found this, I decided I'd wrap it up.

The computer was returned to its original owner, and he probably threw it away. Ah well, It was rather slow anyhow =)