I have a HP zd7000 laptop with Windows XP Professional on it.  Over the past few months I have been having problems with my computer occasionally blue screening and restarting itself.  I never bothered to record the error because it only happened occasionally.  However, yesterday I TURNED my computer on and it immediately blue screened and restarted.  I turned it back on and it did the same thing.  Another try yielded the same results.  So I decided that something like a virus must be really messing up with my computer and I was going to format my computer and do a CLEAN install of XP Pro.

I found the XP CD that came with my computer and I popped it in and restarted.  I chose the clean install.  I formatted my hd.  Everything seemed to be going along just fine.  Then it started copying the windows files from the CD onto my computer.  At about 40% an error popped up saying that ______ file cannot be found.  Options were to retry, skip the file, or abort the installation.  I tried retrying it but it didn't work so I skipped the file.  On the very next file the same thing happened.  Then the next file.  Then the next.  Every file beyond that 40% mark would not copy onto my computer.  After I skipped the rest of the files a stop error came up saying that it is restarting my computer because something was not properly installed (I was like duh XP didn't install properly).  

I tried the whole thing again.  Same thing.  I checked my CD and it is unscratched.  I used it not too long ago to do the same thing.  I went downstairs and grabbed another XP CD we had lying around and the same thing happened.  My brother let me try his Windows 2k CD as well.  The copying of those files get to 51% and does the same thing.  ______ file cannot be found.  I can't finish a Windows installation and I know it is not because of faulty CDS.  

What could be CAUSING this to happen?  Could it be a virus or something?  I am completely at a loss.Boot from a Win98 bootdisk, run Fdisk, elect to delete all partitions, remake your partition(s) and then format the drive. Formatting alone won't necessarily destroy all viral traces.
Having said that, it may not be due to viral activity - The blue screens appear for a reason and you must take note of what they're telling you.

After formatting the drive, run Scandisk with surface scan on.
Now run MemTest86.