I was talking about other people that posted this question before. you might have a virus stuck in your memory or maybe MS put something there (they did it to me once when I lost my serial to mce and used a bootleg serial)
1.unplug your hard drives and ram.
2.turn on computer. it won't boot but should beep. turn it off
3.repeat 2. doing this will clear the ram
4. hook ram and hdd back up. boot for the powermax cd (in my signature) and do not boot from the hdd (doing so will stick the virus back) and wipe it clean (it can delete bootsector viruses. the windows cd can't)
now install windows. if this doesn't work you have a screwed up cd rom drive
Had to copy some files from the XP CD onto floppy disk 3. Also had to copy autochk.exe onto another floppy. XP up and running. If it happens again I'll backup some files and take Eric B.'s advice. Thanks everyone!